The Feline Muse

This missive is about writers and their cats. Or should that be the other way around?For some reason, cats are very much associated with writers. Cats are very much the de rigueur pet for those who make a living with words. I'm not entirely sure that automatic association is justified. After all, plenty of famous writers had dogs. James Thurber dedicated his story, “The Dog That Bit People,” to his own dog, Muggs.Gertrude Stein had two white poodles, two chihuahuas and a Majorcan hound.Truman Capote of “In Cold Blood” fame had a English bulldog named Charlie J. Fatburger. He also had a cat named Tiffany and a crow named Lola.When John Steinbeck, his health in decline, set out to see the highways and byways of this great land one last time, he not only took his beloved poodle along for the ride, the made him the titular character in the resulting book, “Travels with Charley.”Harlan Ellison had repeatedly said one of his most famous works, the grisly dystopian satire “A Boy and His Dog,” which tells the story of a telepathic dog that is far and away smarter than his owner, was written for his dog own, Abu. And yet, for some reason, it is cats that we first think of when the conversation turns to writers and their pets. Actually, now that I think about it, that any conversation might turn to writers and their pets seems kind of weird to me, but it happens more often that you might think. If the conversation does indeed turn that direction, chances are a cat lover is in the driver's seat. I suspect the reason for this association may be fairly simple: cats, like writers, are pretentious.And, of course, so are cat owners. Those afflicted with ailurophilia (the love of cats) are horribly pretentious. You can tell because they use words like ailurophilia. Of course, there is also the tendency of cat owners, especially those with a literary bent, to go overboard. A dog owner who writes usually owns one dog. Cat owners who write, however, rarely have just one.Samuel Clemens, alias Mark Twain, the man who pretty much invented the American novel, had as many as 19 cats. No one is quite sure how many cats T.S. Eliot, he of “Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats” fame, actually had, but it was a lot. And 63 years after his death, you can still find about 60 cats roaming around Ernest Hemingway's home in Key West, all descendants of a six-toed cat named Snowball. Cats seem to be both unconcerned with what other people think and yet also somehow demanding of love and attention. Now that I think about it, maybe cats ARE writers.

Thayer Central Finishes Second At State

Early Morning Fight Leads to Arrest

Related Articles

Speculation

Gage County Newsletter

Unbearably Stupid (Allegedly)

Max Hanshaw