Letters of Note: Cats Read online

  It had never occurred to me that their furry love develops from what was shown them as kittens. I expect you are right. The ownerly paw is certainly a nursing cat’s gesture.

  You should encourage Tiber to sleep with you. He might come to prefer it to midnight battling with the Wood Cat. Come winter, he certainly will. I am afraid of the Wood Cat’s claws, still more of his teeth.

  Were your hailstones blue? We once had such a storm here, with lightning ripping hail from the sky; and the hailstones were hard as marbles, and blue as aquamarines. And there was another storm, after a long drought, when the lightning was green. It was strange to see the bleached fields, the rusty trees, momentarily sluiced with the look of spring.

  I have been spared acquaintances who might have explained to me about blue hailstones and green lightning, so I can enjoy them with simple pleasure.

  Earth that grew with joyful ease Hemlock for Socrates–

  The longer I live, the more my heart assents to that couplet.

  With love,

  Sylvia

  LETTER 06

  YOU KILLED MY CAT

  Guy Davenport to the drivers of Lexington:

  Date unknown

  Born in South Carolina in 1927, Guy Davenport was many things: a writer of fiction; an illustrator, sometimes of his own stories; a painter; a published poet; an award-winning translator of ancient Greek texts; a critic; and a Professor of English. He also, most importantly, loved his cat, and when his beloved feline friend was run over on the streets of Lexington, Kentucky, Davenport reacted by writing a furious letter addressed to the drivers of his city. He then sent that letter to the popular Lexington Herald newspaper and paid for it to be printed in its pages.

  THE LETTER

  TO THE DRIVERS OF LEXINGTON:

  All of you, without exception, gape-mouthed teenagers who squawl your tires around the clock with no policeman to say you nay, ministers of God who take time off from sliding around in your Mercedes-Benzes to set me an example of charity, blue-haired ladies who never in your life have seen a stop sign, politicians too terrified of losing a vote to do anything about traffic which defines anarchy and illustrates idiocy, speeders, light-jumpers, drunks, dope-addicts, and the entire moronic, arrogant, shiftless lot of you: you have killed some 900 of yourselves this year in Kentucky, and maimed another 2000 for life, and this afternoon you killed my cat – not, I’m certain, on purpose, for with yourselves to kill, and children, and bigger game than cats, I do not suppose you could focus your feeble wits enough to do anything as concentrated as a deliberate act. You killed my cat out of the same sloth and God-forsaken laziness and pride by which you use the city streets for a race track and a parade ground to show off all that you have of significance on this earth, your expensive, poisonous, noisy, bullying, fast, lethal automobiles. I have taken this ad to express openly my utter contempt for the lot of you, and for the politicians who pretend to govern our city and who still let you have your selfish and degraded pleasure behind the wheel.

  Sincerely,

  Guy Davenport

  LETTER 07

  LONG TAILS DANCING AT NIGHT

  Lafcadio Hearn to Basil Hall Chamberlain

  August 1891

  In 1890, after twenty years in the US where he was known for his extensive writings on New Orleans, Greek-born author Lafcadio Hearn moved to Japan and immediately fell in love with a culture and language about which he would write, in books and in letters, until his death fourteen years later. In 1891, having lived in Japan for a year, Hearn, also a great lover of cats, wrote this letter to his friend Basil Hall Chamberlain, a British-born Japanologist and professor of Japanese in Tokyo who had moved to Japan in 1873.

  THE LETTER

  Matsue, August, 1891.

  Dear Professor Chamberlain,–

  Having reached a spot where I can write upon something better than a matted floor, I find three most pleasant letters from you. The whole of the questions in them I cannot answer to-night, but will do so presently, when I obtain the full information.

  However, as to cats’ tails I can answer at once. Izumo cats – (and I was under the impression until recently that all Japanese cats were alike) – are generally born with long tails. But there is a belief that any cat whose tail is not cut off in kittenhood, will become an obake [a ghost] or a nekomata [a supernatural, double-tailed], and there are weird stories about cats with long tails dancing at night, with towels tied round their heads. There are stories about petted cats eating their mistress and then assuming the form, features, and voice of the victim. Of course you know the Buddhist tradition that no cat can enter paradise. The cat and the snake alone wept not for the death of Buddha. Cats are unpopular in Izumo, but in Hōki I saw that they seemed to exist under more favourable conditions. The real reason for the unpopularity of the cat is its powers of mischief in a Japanese house;– it tears the tatami [floor mat], the karakami [decorative paper], the shoji [sliding door], scratches the woodwork, and insists upon carrying its food into the best room to eat it upon the floor. I am a great lover of cats, having “raised,” as the Americans say, more than fifty;– but I could not gratify my desire to have a cat here. The creature proved too mischievous, and wanted always to eat my uguisu.

  The oscillation of one’s thoughts concerning the Japanese – the swaying you describe – is and has for some time been mine also.

  There are times when they seem so small! And then again, although they never seem large, there is a vastness behind them, – a past of indefinite complexity and marvel, – an amazing power of absorbing and assimilating, – which forces one to suspect some power in the race so different from our own that one cannot understand that power. And as you say, whatever doubts or vexations one has in Japan, it is only necessary to ask one’s self:– “Well, who are the best people to live with?” For it is a question whether the intellectual pleasures of social life abroad are not more than dearly bought at the cost of social pettinesses which do not seem to exist in Japan at all.

  [. . .]

  As usual, I find I have been too presumptuous in writing offhand about cats’ tails. On enquiring, I learn that there are often, born of the same mother, Izumo kittens with short tails, and kittens with long tails. This would show that two distinct species of cats exist here. The long-tailed kittens are always deprived when possible of the larger part of their caudal appendage. The short tails are spared. If an old cat be seen with a short tail, people say, – “this cat is old, but she has a short tail: therefore she is a good cat.” (For the obake cat gets two tails when old, and every wicked cat has a long tail.) I am told that at the recent bon, in Matsue, cats of the evil sort were seen to dance upon the roofs of the houses.

  What you tell me about those Shintō rituals and their suspicious origin seems to me quite certainly true. So the kara-shishi and the mon and the dragon-carvings and the tōrōs, – all stare me in the face as pillage of Buddhism. But the funeral rite which I saw and took part in, on the anniversary of the death of Prince Sanjō, struck me as immemorially primitive. The weird simplicity of it – the banquet to the ghost, the covering of the faces with white paper, the moaning song, the barbarian music, all seemed to me traditions and echoes of the very childhood of the race. I shall try to discover the genesis of the book you speak of as dubious in character. The Shintō christening ceremony is strictly observed here, and there are curious facts about the funeral ceremonies – totally at variance with and hostile to Buddhism.

  By the way, when I visited a tera [Buddhist temple] in Mionoseki after having bought o fuda [amulet] at the Miojinja, I was told I must not carry the o fuda into the court of the tera. The Kami would be displeased.

  For the moment, good-bye.

  Ever faithfully,

  Lafcadio Hearn

  LETTER 08

  POOR MOUSCHI!

  Anne Frank to Kitty

  10 May 1944

  In July of 1942, shortly after her sister, Margot, received a letter from the Nazis demand
ing that she attend a German labour camp, thirteen-year-old Jewish girl Anne Frank went into hiding with her family in Amsterdam. For the next two years the Franks lived above offices belonging to Otto, Anne’s father, and it was during this period that Anne documented her family’s struggle by writing letters in her now-famous diary – all addressed to Kitty, a character from a series of novels Anne liked. In May of 1944, three months before her family were captured by the Gestapo, Anne wrote to Kitty with news of an incident involving Mouschi, a tabby cat belonging to Peter van Pels, the son of Otto’s colleague, who was also in hiding. Within a year of this particular letter being written, Anne and Margot Frank had died in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

  THE LETTER

  Wednesday, 10 May, 1944

  Dearest Kitty,

  We were sitting in the attic yesterday afternoon working on our French when suddenly I heard the splatter of water behind me. I asked Peter what it might be. Without pausing to reply, he dashed up to the loft – the scene of the disaster – and shoved Mouschi, who was squatting beside her soggy litter box, back to the right place. This was followed by shouts and squeals, and then Mouschi, who by that time had finished peeing, took off downstairs. In search of something similar to her box, Mouschi had found herself a pile of wood shavings, right over a crack in the floor. The puddle immediately trickled down to the attic and, as luck would have it, landed in and next to the potato barrel. The ceiling was dripping, and since the attic floor has also got its share of cracks, little yellow drops were leaking through the ceiling and onto the dining table, between a pile of stockings and books.

  I was doubled up with laughter, it was such a funny sight. There was Mouschi crouched under a chair, Peter armed with water, powdered bleach and a cloth, and Mr. van Daan trying to calm everyone down. The room was soon set to rights, but it’s a well-known fact that cat puddles stink to high heaven. The potatoes proved that all too well, as did the wood shavings, which Father collected in a bucket and brought downstairs to burn.

  Poor Mouschi! How were you to know it’s impossible to get peat for your box?

  Anne

  LETTER 09

  IT IS LIKE LIVING IN A STATE OF SIEGE

  Charles Dickens to John Forster

  6 July 1856

  During the summer of 1851, while the family were holidaying at Fort House on the coast of Broadstairs, Kent, the daughters of Charles Dickens were given a young canary, just a few weeks old, by a local lady who reared birds. Dick, as they called him, was adored by all, and settled in quickly, soon becoming one of the family. He began to attract attention from two cats who loitered to the rear of the house. Dickens described the situation in a letter to his friend and biographer, John Forster. Thankfully, Dick lived for another decade, and was buried beneath a rose tree at Gad’s Hill Place, Higham, on 14 October 1866. The surviving cats eventually gave up, never to be seen again.

  THE LETTER

  6th July 1856

  The only thing new in this garden is that war is raging against two particularly tigerish and fearful cats (from the mill, I suppose), which are always glaring in dark corners, after our wonderful little Dick. Keeping the house open at all points, it is impossible to shut them out, and they hide themselves in the most terrific manner: hanging themselves up behind draperies, like bats, and tumbling out in the dead of night with frightful caterwaulings. Hereupon, French borrows Beaucourt’s gun, loads the same to the muzzle, discharges it twice in vain and throws himself over with the recoil, exactly like a clown. But at last (while I was in town) he aims at the more amiable cat of the two, and shoots that animal dead. Insufferably elated by this victory, he is now engaged from morning to night in hiding behind bushes to get aim at the other. He does nothing else whatever. All the boys encourage him and watch for the enemy – on whose appearance they give an alarm which immediately serves as a warning to the creature, who runs away. They are at this moment (ready dressed for church) all lying on their stomachs in various parts of the garden. Horrible whistles give notice to the gun what point it is to approach. I am afraid to go out, lest I should be shot. Mr. Plornish says his prayers at night in a whisper, lest the cat should overhear him and take offence. The tradesmen cry out as they come up the avenue, ‘Me voici! C’est moi – boulanger – ne tirez pas, Monsieur Franche!’ It is like living in a state of siege; and the wonderful manner in which the cat preserves the character of being the only person not much put out by the intensity of this monomania, is most ridiculous. About four pounds of powder and half a ton of shot have been (13th of July) fired off at the cat (and the public in general) during the week. The finest thing is that immediately after I have the noble sportsman blazing away at her in the garden in front, I look out of my room door into the drawing-room and am pretty sure to see her coming in after the bird, in the calmest manner possible, by the back window.

  ‘WAR IS RAGING AGAINST TWO PARTICULARLY TIGERISH AND FEARFUL CATS.’

  – Charles Dickens

  LETTER 10

  TO ALL POLLICLE DOGS & JELLICLE CATS

  T.S. Eliot to Thomas Faber

  1931

  In 1931, eight years prior to the publication of his much-loved collection of poems, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, American poet and publisher T.S. Eliot wrote to his godson, Thomas Faber, on the occasion of his fourth birthday. This letter, and the delightful spoof party invitation it contained, would eventually inspire Eliot’s aforementioned book, which in turn, decades later, would be adapted to become the phenomenally successful Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, Cats. Eliot corresponded with Thomas until Eliot passed away in 1965.

  THE LETTER

  FABER & FABER

  Limited

  PUBLISHERS

  24 RUSSELL SQUARE

  LONDON, W.C.1

  Easter 1931.

  Dear Tom,

  I Believe that your are to have a Birthday soon, and I think that you will then be Four Years Old (I am not Clever at Arithmetic) but that is a Great Age, so I thought we might send out this

  INVITATION

  TO ALL POLLICLE DOGS & JELLICLE CATS

  TO COME TO THE BIRTHDAY OF

  THOMAS FABER.

  Pollicle Dogs and Jellicle Cats!

  Come from your Kennels & Houses & Flats;

  Pollicle Dogs & Cats, draw near;

  Jellicle Cats & Dogs, Appear;

  Come with your Ears & your Whiskers & Tails

  Over the Mountains & Valleys of Wales.

  This is your ONLY CHANCE THIS YEAR,

  Your ONLY CHANCE to – what do you spose? –

  Brush Up your Coats and Turn out your Toes,

  And come with a Hop & a Skip & a Dance –

  Because, for this year, it’s your ONLY CHANCE

  To come with your Whiskers & Tails & Hair on

  To

  Ty Glyn Aeron

  Ciliau Aeron –

  Because your are INVITED to Come

  With a Flute & a Fife & a Fiddle & Drum,

  With a Fiddle, a Fife, & a Drum & a Tabor

  (A Musicle Instrument that makes a Joyful Noise)

  To the Birthday Party of

  THOMAS ERLE FABER!

  Oh But P.S. we mustn’t send out this Invitation after All, Because, if ALL the Pollicle Dogs & Jellicle Cats came (and of course they would come) then all the roads would be blocked up, and what’s more, they would track Muddy Feet into the House, and your Mother wouldn’t Like that at All, and what’s More Still, you would have to give them All a Piece of your Birthday Cake, and there would be so Many that there wouldn’t be any Cake left for you, and that would be Dreadful, so we won’t send out this Invitation, so no more for the Present from your Silly Uncle

  Tom

  LETTER 11

  I SEE YOU, MY BEAUTY BOY

  Elizabeth Taylor to her missing cat

  1974

  For two months in 1974, as Welsh movie star Richard Burton filmed his part in The Klansman alongside Lee Marvin and O. J. Simpson, he and Elizabet
h Taylor, to whom he was married, moved to California with Cassius, just one of Taylor’s many beloved cats. Confused by his new surroundings, Cassius soon went missing from their rented home, leaving Taylor distraught. Before long, having tried everything to locate her precious feline friend, Taylor wrote him a letter. Sadly, Cassius never returned. To make matters worse, the stress of the move resulted in Taylor and Burton’s divorce on their return home. They remarried the next year.

  THE LETTER

  Letter to my Lovely Lost Cat

  I see you, my beauty boy, in the reflection of those shining black-brown rocks ahead of me. I see the green o’ thy eyes in every rained, sweated leaf shaking in my eyes.

  I remember the sweet smell of your fur against my neck when I was deeply in trouble and how, somehow you made it better – you knew! You knew always when I hurt and you made comfort for me, as I did once for you when you were a broken kitten.

  Anyway, I love you Cassius – and thank you for your beauty.

  Please come back!

  LETTER 12

  THE CAT IS NOT A SIMPLE EQUATION

  Henry Harland to The Yellow Book

  July 1896

  Born in Brooklyn in 1861, Henry Harland spent the first part of his career writing a commercially successful but critically knocked series of stories about Jewish life in the US using the pseudonym Sidney Luska, who most people believed to be a Jewish immigrant. In 1889 he moved to London, dropped the disguise, and with his real name on show began writing novels that garnered critical acclaim. In 1894 Harland also became literary editor of The Yellow Book, an English quarterly that ran for three years and for which Harland sometimes also wrote, alongside names such as Henry James and W.B. Yeats. It was in The Yellow Book, in 1896, that this letter appeared, written by ‘The Yellow Dwarf’, a regular contributor to the periodical who later turned out to be Harland.