The Sandstone Blog
The cat in literature
T. S. Eliot never really cut the mustard for me. The Waste Land seemed a bit too wasted, Four Quartets a bit dismembered. The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock could be more ardent. In my experience the women in the room do come and go, but not to speak of Michaelangelo. In 1935 he came north with other Faber Directors to visit Neil and Daisy Gunn just a couple of miles from where I sit now. There is a picture of Eliot in John Pick and Gene Hart’s biography of Gunn in which he is seated outside Brae Farmhouse holding up one of his very wet socks and in this I find a very human touch.
Faber and Faber, the most important poetry imprint in the world, owes much to Eliot’s collection Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, although much, much more to his behind the scenes work. Old Possum was the name he was given by his godchildren, for whom the poems were written. The book came out in 1939 and was a huge success in spite of the War. It has never been out of print, I guess because it’s for kiddies of all ages; a phenomenal success that has kept F&F in business through the thin times and underwrites better, slower burning work. In terms of his reputation I see it as a distraction. Eliot’s editorial efforts, both as commissioning editor and hammer and anvil man, are too much ignored.
I have never been someone who loves, or even likes, cats. Those who do, I note, allow them to take over their lives. That said, there is one lying across my thigh now, digging his claws in as I type. Apparently this is a sign of affection, but it may be an attempt at control. Between his claws and his powerful brainwaves he may be steering my hands. This cat is male, about 16 years of age, white with smoky blue patches, and extremely fluffy. This fluffiness makes him look quite big, but when you get your hands on him you discover there is not all that much cat in there. He is not really such a tiger after all.
A woman friend of mine was moving home, out of bustling, cosmopolitan Dingwall into one of the many Sleepy Hollows between here and Inverness, and fully engaged in what was going to be a disruptive two to three week process. I was asked to look after not just one, but three cats for the duration. All three have daft names, as you would expect since they were chosen by a little girl. The guy on my lap now, Asti, is of the McPasti clan. The ginger tom is Django, and he got stuck with McPango. The only female is plump, black as the Earl of Hell’s waistcoat but with a soft, warm heart, and known as Meeka McPeeka. The little girl ceased to be little and has long since found the edge of the nest and launched herself into the blue. The cats and their daft names remain.
For three weeks the hall of Sandstone Towers was given over to newspapers and saucers, smelly cat food and two litter trays, my precious glider chair at the window overlooking the Cromarty Firth commandeered by Meeka. Django is the scardiest cat in God’s creation and never came out from under the bedroom chair except to eat and ablute, or faec, or drop, or whatever it’s called when cats do it.
Alan Coren published a book called Golfing for Cats that had nothing to do with either but was a collection of humorous articles. The idea was that books on golf and books on cats sell and so getting both into the title might just pump up the sales. Other than Eliot’s Macavitty (the Napoleon of Crime), Jellicles, Rum Tum Tugger and Growltiger – isn’t this stuff embarrassing – and Coren’s disgraceful con trick, cats seem to me to be underwritten given the area of human brainpan they overshadow. Lewis Carroll put a Cheshire cat in Wonderland but I struggle to think of another Victorian literary cat. A raven called Grip plays an important part in Barnaby Rudge that could have been given to a cat, but I imagine the high flying Dickens would identify more with Aves than felines.
Asti started to get round me on the evening of Day One by crawling up under the book I was re-reading (A Tale of Love and Darkness by Amos Oz, a great and important work with, so far, no mention of cats), lying on my not inconsiderable tummy and looking me in the eye. It wasn’t his eyes that won me over though, it was his nose. A neat, soft, little pink button, it has two perfectly symmetrical dark patches paired above the nostrils. His eyes are a Satanic green, the central black even more devilishly slit.
Unlike the others he is very vocal, scolding me thoroughly whenever a routine is broken. Not the least of these routines is time spent here at this keyboard. It isn’t easy to call up the muse when you want her but what are rules for if not to be obeyed? Oh yes, rules have been established. At the end of coffee time he will lift his magnificently bushy tail and trot through here to the study expecting me to follow; which, latterly, I have. Nor is it easy typing with a cat on your shoulder.
A significant milestone was passed when I turned in bed to discover that the gap between my thigh and calf muscles when my leg is crooked is exactly Asti shaped. I think he snores louder than I but it’s difficult to be sure. Experts tell me that whispering in a cat’s ear is not necessarily a sign of madness. The time to worry is when they start whispering into yours.
When my woman friend called to say she was ready to take them back and was, in fact, on her way I was hugely relieved. The blighters were on their way out at last. Soon my home, not to say my life, would be my own again. It was only when I heard her foot on the stair that I started to panic. The four of us were in the hall waiting and as the door handle turned, at the very last moment, I broke, swept Asti into the drying cupboard and dropped a towel on him.
Preliminaries over, I lied that her fluffy boy had gone amiss, finally pointing to the open study window and its eight metre drop into the car park as being the only way out. He may have survived the fall, I suggested, long enough to crawl under a bush to die. This did not go down well. We searched the car park from end to end, the surrounding shrubbery, and Sandstone Towers from top to bottom, she going over the bedrooms and study with a fine tooth comb, me going through the lounge, kitchen and all the cupboards. Of Asti there was no sign.
Frankly, her anger shocked me. She should not have called me those names. A woman with such a temper does not deserve this wonderful cat with his beautiful tail and I wonder if, perhaps, there has been a divine intervention to deliver him to a better home. Yes, that sounds reasonable; but if her anger shocked me her grief was even worse. Tears fell like rain and sobs shook the building to its foundations. There was no comforting the poor woman beyond offering a box of tissues, but coming clean was out of the question. Not only would she take Asti away but certain parts of my anatomy might go with him. Ideal, she has often said, for conversion into dangly earrings.
‘Woman was made to weep’ © R. Burns, and he should know. Asti McPasti and I watched from the glider chair, hardening our hearts as the sad cavalcade of distraught woman and two puzzled cats made its way down the hill and off to Sleepy Hollow. I am content at how things have turned out, although a life of subterfuge and caution lies ahead. I think Asti is too. Back here at the keyboard he whispered in my ear, ‘Never give in to a woman’s tears’. What do you say to that? Miew!