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INTERLUDE ON CATS

I have always been an idolater of cats. Idolater is the accurate word; and perhaps only those will understand my devotion in whom, as in me, the love of cats is inborn. I once heard a famous scientist in a public lecture say that most children are afraid of anything that has fur on it; and their fear, he explained, is owing to the fact that some forty thousand years ago furred animals were dangerous to the hairless human children; and a feeling therefore rose which had become instinctive, persisting long after the original reason for it had ceased to exist. This statement, like many other remarks of scientific men, I heard with profound scepticism.

My father, my mother, and my aunt took no interest in cats, and would have been undisturbed had they known they would never see one again. Yet I cannot remember the time when any cat, no matter how humble in origin and in sociül station, failed to arouse in me breathless adoration. Even the dirtiest alleycat was an object of worship.

Many persons love cats; but have they had these intimations of felinity in earliest childhood? How shall I describe this cat-worship? As a baby I loved every piece of fur. My oldest brother had a fur hat; night after night I slept with it. I called it the cat-hat. My aunt Libbie had a tippet of ermine. I used to hug this article, and kiss it frantically. My aunt at first was touched when she came into the room and found me kissing her ermine, because she thought it was evidence of my love for her. She discovered it was nothing of the kind; and she was even more puzzled than disappointed. I loved my aunt and she was good to me; but when she asked me if I kissed the ermine because it was hers, I shouted with the disconcerting candour characteristic of childhood, ‘No! No!’ and kissing the fur with renewed vigour, I called it ‘ Kitty! Pussy!’ Even today I long to stroke every piece of fur I see. No doubt many visitors thought I was insane. Perhaps they were right. Only if I was, I have never recovered. In addressing women I admired I added the termination cat to their names; thus Elizabeth became Lizcat, Olivia Livcat, Madelene Mad- cat, Alice Alleycat, and Helen Hellcat.

I have always envied professionals I have seen enter the cages of lions and tigers and stroke cats eight feet long!

Of all domestic animals the cat is the most beautiful and the most graceful. His anatomy is precisely adapted to his needs; and although he takes only a hundredth as much athletic exercise as a dog, he is always in perfect condition. Whoever saw a housemaid exercising a cat? There is no other beast who from a position of absolute relaxation can spring with accuracy and with no preliminary motion. The cat does not have to wind up like a baseball pitcher, or get ‘set;’ he transmutes potential energy into kinetic energy with no visible effort.

When a cat aims at the top of a fence or the surface of a table, he usually succeeds at the first effort, unlike the dog, who will try and continue to try long after the impossibility of attainment has been demonstrated to a spectator. The cat’s economy of effort is as remarkable as his judgement of distance; you cannot persuade him to try for any mark beyond his reach. The cat catches birds on the ground by outguessing them and by a final spring faster than flight; but if the bird has risen in the air, the cat makes no attempt at pursuit, which he knows to be futile and undignified. But the dog will run after flying birds to the Limit of exhaustion,

The amazing activity of the cat is delicately balanced by his capacity for relaxation. Every household should contain a cat, not only for decorative and domestic values, but because the cat in quiescence is medicinal to irritable, tense, tortured men and women. In spite of all the physicians and hospitals and books that are endeavouring to induce men and women to ‘relax ‘—continued energy seems to be required in order to keep quiet—few human beings understand the art of repose. They cannot let go.

Now when the cat decides to rest, he not only lies down; he pours his body out on the floor like water. It is reposeful merely to watch him. The average man looks up from the morning newspaper and roars at the folly and stupidity of our law-makers; then he happens to see the family cat, who seems to put to the householder every day the Emersonian question—’ So hot, my little Sir?’

The beauty and grace and agility of the cat’s body are equalled by his intellectual and spiritual nature. It is often said by those who have no affection for cats that cats have no affection; this is a slander. A youth tried to convince an old man that cats were without affection, saying the cat loves you only because he wishes to get something out of you. It isn’t really love. ‘Ah,’ replied the sage, ‘when you are as old as I am, you will call that love.’
The dog is a good fellow and jolly companion, but he does not compare in intellectual power with the cat. The cat has an acute mind, an inflexible will, and a patience almost divine. If the cat wishes to leave the room, he makes no fuss about it and does not annoy you with vocal importunities; he selects a position near the door. Now you may change his position but you cannot change his purpose; his purpose is to leave the room; and he knows that opportunities come to those who are ready. He pretends he has dismissed the matter from his mind; but when someone happens to open the door, the cat departs.

The patience of the cat in hunting is one reason why he seldom returns empty-clawed. A hole in the ground will arouse terrific enthusiasm in a dog; he will bark frantically and dig vigorously; but unless something happens within five minutes, his ardour cools; he goes away and forgets. If a cat decides there is game in a certain spot he does not advertise his presence; he waits for the prey to make the first move and he can outwait any other living thing.

One reason men have always liked dogs is that the dog flatters us with fawning servility; it is agreeable to be received with such demonstrations of affection. But the devotion of the dog has been overpraised. What a dog wants is entertainment. He is easily bored, cannot amuse himself, and demands excitement. His ideal is a life of active uselessness. That the dog is devoted only to his master is a myth. He is devoted to anyone in whose company he finds entertainment. I had to be disillusioned before I accepted this truth. My first dog was a noble Irish setter who apparently could not bear to have me out of his sight; he cared nothing for guests or strangers; if I left the room he instantly followed me. I felt proud of this, and often thought what a noble, faithful fellow he was. But one day I fell into a sickness and had to stay in bed two weeks. For an hour or so on the first day he remained in my room. But there were other men in the house. One of them took the dog for a walk and alienated his affections. The dog never came near me, but pretended to be pleased when I recovered.

Even the famous ‘one-man’ dogs are fed by the one man. Yet I feel like a traitor in calling attention to these moral defects. How can I help loving a creature so affectionate, so demonstrative, so responsive? I can’t. It is only my love of truth that compels me to say that in dignity and neatness the dog does not compare with the cat. The dog is a jolly good fellow; he leaps joyously upon you, places his muddy paws on your shirt-front, and after swimming, postpones the shaking of his frame until he is within close range. Indoors he wags his tail violently, knocking down vases and ornaments and leaving a trail of wreckage. The cat, on the other hand, after delicately showing affection by rubbing gently against one’s ankles, springs without apparent effort to a narrow shelf covered with fragile objects and never displaces anything. His extraordinary mental and physical poise is shown by the astounding fact that he can sleep with assurance on the top of a fence only two inches broad, or indeed far aloft on the trim branch of a tree.

The superiority of the cat is shown most convincingly in his intellectual resources. You may love a dog but the cat commands your respect. His infinite capacity to keep still makes him good company for many quiet hours. The dog, as someone has said, is always on the wrong side of the door.

The ability of the cat to entertain himself was shown in a striking essay which appeared about forty years ago in the Yale Literary Magazine; it was written by an undergraduate, Ray Morris, who later demonstrated his ability to write equally well on other themes. He emphasized the cat’s intellectual resources.

Ihave observed this fact so often that it may be in my comments I shall unwittingly borrow from my memory of Mr. Morris’s essay. If you leave the dog outside the front door only for a moment, while you are looking inside for something, he is in a flutter of nerves; he barks, whines, and scratches in an agony of desolation. But if you kick the cat out of the house with a kind of final gesture, he remains thoughtful a moment as if to say, ‘Now I had planned to spend the afternoon indoors; but it is possible that it is more hygienic in the garden. I will sleep until there are further developments.’

The cat, although he has not the super smelling power of the dog, has an astonishing faculty of finding his way to the place he has chosen to reach. A man who owned a magnificent cat was told by his neighbours that if he did not kill the animal before Saturday night, they would do it for him; for the cat had shown a fondness for their chickens. He was at a loss what to do. A friend advised him to take the cat to the most complicated corner in the city of Boston, somewhere near Scollay Square. There the streets are so crooked and twisted that no stranger has ever found his way without enquiry; he should leave the cat there, would never see him again, and would have no cause for worry, since the place abounded in grocery shops where someone would gladly take in the animal. The owner was asked a month later if he had done this and with what result. He replied, ‘What a place that was! if I had not followed the cat, I should never have got home.’

To a man individual liberty is the greatest blessing; to a dog it is the last word in despair. He is happy only in slavery. Hence he sticks to a master even though he is treated badly. The more one beats him, the greater is his servility. If you wish to keep a cat you must treat him with respect. The cat is essentially free. He has never been entirely tamed. He will not stand physical ill-treatment and you must not laugh at him when he comes down from a tree, the only thing he does ungracefully. The Egyptians, with their endless patience, were the only people who succeeded in turning him into a domestic animal, and heaven only knows how many centuries they spent on the task.

Men resemble dogs; women are more like cats. A large part of men’s activity is physical; they spend much time in running around, and they demand excitement. Women manage somehow to entertain themselves in a way incomprehensible to the male mind.

It is a pity that dogs take no interest in washing themselves; it would help in passing the time. It is a constant resource for a cat. If there is nothing else going on or if the cat is wakeful, he can always wash himself. To a cat self- washing is a means of cleanliness, an athletic exercise, a pastime, a fine art, a religious ritual. I have seen a cat go into a frenzy of ablution.

How strange it is that to a cat’s tongue, corrugated like the blade of a golf-niblick, heat should be unendurable. The cat always waits for hot food to cool.

You can guess what a dog is thinking about and what he will do next, both of which divinations fail with the cat. The eyes of a cat do not betray his mind. He has such a patrician reserve that when he does show affection it is enormously flattering. When you want a dog to come to you instantly, you shout at him. Try that on the cat.

It is often said that the dog is more intelligent, because he learns tricks so easily. But is this good evidence? You command a dog to ‘sit up’ and the poor fellow thinks he has to do it. The average cat throws off, pretends unconquerable limpness of body and stupidity of mind, and an inability to understand what is wanted. Of course he understands only too well. Why sit up? There is nothing in it.

But cats, alas, are as mortal as dogs. It may be that they have nine lives, but as my friend George Stanleigh Arnold says, it is always the ninth that they lose.

No man in the world understood cats better than the famous playwright, William Gillette. After I had printed an article on cats, I received from Mr. Gillette the following letter:

Surely it must be evident to you that those who attack a person for appreciating the wonderful traits and beauties of cats are grossly and absolutely ignorant, and also pitiably prejudiced regarding them, and in addition are the resident members of a class which prefers abject unreasoning worship and cloying servility to unconquerable independence and rare judgment of character.
And surely you know what good company you are in—and I am
not referring to myself alone in reminding you of this—in the appreciation of cats. Even old Voltaire took the trouble to say ‘Beware of the woman who does not like cats’—and although I have sometimes failed to beware of her, I nevertheless enjoy having that testimony to Mr. V.’s attitude on the question.
What I really wanted to say was not the foregoing (which is really foregone, as there can be no argument about it)—but the following:
There are three things which I really think you would do well to touch upon when you next take up this subject:
s. The absolute necessity of cats for the preservation of birds. There is unlimited testimony from scientific sources that, for the few birds- that are caught and devoured by cats, there are millions whose lives are saved by the destruction of their enemies.
2. The unquestionable possession of some sort of extra ‘sense’ which enables cats to be aware of the attitude—or even more than the attitude, of a human mind, where it concerns themselves. I have experimented a great deal in this direction, and cannot avoid the conclusion that cats are either mind readers (when they want to be) or that they have such a wonderful appreciation of exterior symptoms that they arrive at the mental processes via that route.
3. 1 have forgotten this one for the moment; but I want to tell you this; it was very important and it would be a good thing for you to consult me before you do anything further on this subject—and also possibly (for all I know) on any other.
P.S. Although I have taken considerable time in trying to remember what the third point was, it has not yet occurred to me. For a substitute, however, let us say that it was the exquisite sense of comedy possessed by the family under discussion—comedy of the very highest known altitude. Though 1 have not considered the matter, it seems to me that no other animal is possessed of such an exquisite and fastidious sense of humour—not even man himself.

Finally, although there are many persons who are afraid of dogs, they are not really afraid of dogs—they are afraid of being bitten. But the uncanny and unearthly nature of the cat is shown by the fact that many brave men and women are in terror if there is a cat in the room. It is not fear of what the cat might do—it is fear of the Cat. Lord Roberts, the great soldier, had an unconquerable fear of cats. Cosmo Hamilton wrote (Unwritten History),

He dined once at the country house of a mutual friend, rose in the middle of dinner, ran out into the garden, and stood trembling on the lawn because a yellow-eyed Angora kitten had poked an inquisitive head around the door. His fear was well-founded; for the next moment the kitten would have leaped on his knee. Cats have a sure instinct for those who fear or dislike them, and they will invariably leap upon them or rub against them, in the endeavour to dispel prejudice.

The late Doctor James Uosmer Penniman of Philadelphia wrote an exquisite little book on cats called ~T’he Alley Rabbit. He received a letter from William Gillette, written in his castle, ‘Seventh Sister.’

Ihave bestowed upon you the highest honor in the repertoire of the Seventh Sister Establishment. I have named a cat after you and it wasn’t a gelding either but a fine sturdy Thomas cat. This superb animal has been baptized, not with the name of James alone but with your middle and last names as well. Also we call him Doc for short, and the old boy seems perfectly delighted, throwing his tail about in the air with joyful jerks—which is a darn sight more than you could do. Ever since we have been addressing this cat as Dr. James Hosmer Penniman, he has been leaving carefully selected rats on the Seventh Sister Penniman Memorial Library.

On 21 January 1928 I received the following letter from Mr. W.A.Way, from Grey Institute, Port Elizabeth, Cape Colony.

I wonder whether you noticed in Mr. Fletcher’s Memoir of A.D.Godley which appears in Godley’s Reliquiae (Oxford University Press) the concluding words ‘he shared with many wise persons a most intelligent and comprehensive affection for the whole race of cats.’ Godley, who was editing the Oxford Magazine when I was up, is I suppose the happiest and cleverest and most scholarly of all writers and parodists. (He died at 70 in 1925) so that you are again in excellent company!

I received the picture of a cross-eyed cat, the pet of Mrs. Muriel Frey, of San Francisco. Had anyone knowledge of any other cat thus peculiar? My own white cat,
Miss Frosty Evans of Philadelphia, had one blue and one green eye, attracting the attention of biologists. Men and women with one blue and one brown eye are not uncommon, but the blue-and-green combination is rare.

Only a few years ago I was delighted to learn from a philosopher and scholar, author of many books, and my intimate friend, the late Dr. Henshaw Ward, that a cat had been named after me. He wrote from North Carolina in the winter of 1933:

Mv DEAR BILLY:

This afternoon, when I called on Professor C.A.Lloyd of the Biltmore Junior College, I was astonished to hear Mrs. Lloyd say, ‘Oh, here is William Lyon Phelps.’ Then a gray cat trotted from behind me, and I was amused.
But after I had heard the story of the name I realized that it is not amusing. It is an idyll—as I will show you. When this cat was a kitten and before he was christened, the boy who owned him happened to read some passage of yours in which you express your admiration for cats. The boy exclaimed, ‘Any one who can write so understandingly about cats ought to have one named after him.’ The boy was entirely serious. The animal is always called ‘Dr. Phelps’ by the whole family.