What is home without a familiar shadow at our feet? At Reinventing Home, we can’t get enough of cats and dogs, so we were very pleased to receive two inspired anthologies from Notting Hill Editions. On Cats, compiled by Margaret Atwood, and On Dogs curated by Tracey Ullman, feature delightful paeans to our pets by those with literary pedigrees. These books explore what we learn from our animal familiars—and why it helps, sometimes, to view the world from a four-legged point of view. And they also reminds us why pet lovers, in general, are healthier, more creative, and have more fun. But who knew reading about them could be so enjoyable?
Cats—are they Influences or are they Muses? This is the question Margaret Atwood poses as she describes cats as our furry co-conspirators. Cat-deprived as a child, Atwood has made up for it with a vengeance—from litter box to literature. Her stories feature capricious felines and she has even penned a version of Tennyson’s Morte D’Arthur with her cat Blackie as a model for the dying king.
“If I’m going to be a mad old lady with a witch reputation,” concludes the author of The Handmaid’s Tale, “I may as well equip myself with a couple of trusted familiars. Company as one flies through the air on one’s broom…”
For this collection, Atwood has conjured Lynn Truss’s essay on the single life “Making the Cat Laugh,” Edward Gorey on writers and their cats, Lou Andreas-Salomé on Freud’s aloof feline, Ernest Hemingway on his fascinating kittens, and Lewis Carroll on the inscrutability of the Cheshire Cat. But the prize entry in the category of cats that that changed the world, comes from the inventor Nikola Tesla. In the following letter, from 1939, he tells how playing with his childhood pet sparked his fascination with electricity.
Hotel New Yorker, 1939
My dear Miss Fotitch,
I am forwarding to you the calendar of Yugoslavia of 1939 showing the house and community in which I have many sad and joyful adventures, and in which also, by a bizarre coincidence, I was born.
As you can see from the photograph on the sheet for June, the old-fashioned building is located at the foot of a wooded hill called Bogdanic. Adjoining it is a church and behind it, a little further up, the graveyard. Our nearest neighbors were two miles away. In the winter, when the snow was six or seven feet deep, our isolation was complete. My mother was indefatigable. She worked regularly from four o’clock in the morning till eleven in the evening. From four to breakfast time—six am—while others slumbered, I never closed my eyes but watched my mother with intense pleasure as she attended quickly—sometimes running—to her many self-imposed duties. She directed the servants to take care of all our domestic animals, she milked the cows, she performed all sorts of labor unassisted, set the table, prepared breakfast for the whole household. Only when it was ready to be served did the rest of the family get up. After breakfast everybody followed my mother’s inspiring example. All did their work diligently, liked it, and so achieved a measure of contentment.
But I was the happiest of all, the fountain of my enjoyment being our magnificent Macak—the finest of all cats in the world. I wish I could give you an adequate idea of the affection that existed between us. We lived for one another. Wherever I went, Macak followed, because of our mutual love and the desire to protect me. When such a necessity presented itself he would rise to twice his normal height, buckle his back, and with his tail as rigid as a metal bar, and whiskers like steel wires, he would give vent to his rage with explosive puffs: Pfftt! Pfftt! It was a terrifying sight, and whoever had provoked him, human or animal, would beat a hasty retreat.
Every evening we would run from the house along the church wall and he would rush after me and grab me by the trousers. He tried hard to make me believe that he would bite, but the instant his needle-sharp incisors penetrated the clothing, the pressure ceased and their contact with my skin was gentle and tender as a butterfly alighting on a petal. He liked best to roll on the grass with me. While we were doing this, he bit and clawed and purred in rapturous pleasure. He fascinated me so completely that I too bit and clawed and purred. We could not stop but rolled and rolled in a delirium of delight. We indulged in this enchanting sport day by day, except in rainy weather.
In respect to water, Macak was very fastidious. He would jump six feet to avoid wetting his paws. On such days we went into the house and selected a nice cosy place to play. Macak was scrupulously clean, had no fleas or bugs, shed no hair, and showed no objectionable traits. He was touchingly delicate in signifying his wish to be left out at night and scratched the door gently for readmittance. Now I must tell you a strange and unforgettable experience that stayed with me all my life. Our home was about eighteen hundred feet above sea level, and as a rule we had dry weather in the winter. But sometimes a warm wind from the Adriatic would blow persistently for a long time, melting the snow, flooding the land and causing great loss of property and life. We would witness the terrifying spectacle of a mighty, seething river carrying wreckage and tearing down everything movable in its way. I often visualize the events of my youth, and when I think of this scene, the sound of the waters fills my ears and I see, as vividly as then, the tumultuous flow and the mad dance of the wreckage. But my recollections of the Winter, with its dry cold and immaculate white snow, are always agreeable.
It happened that one day the cold was drier than ever before. People walking in the snow left a luminous trail behind them, and the snowball thrown against an obstacle gave a flare of light like a loaf of sugar cut with a knife. In the dusk of the evening, as I stroked Macak’s back, I saw a sheet of light and my hand produced a shower of sparks loud enough to be heard all over the house. My father was a very learned man; he had an answer for every question. But this phenomenon with new even to him. ‘Well,’ he finally remarked, ‘this is nothing but electricity, the same thing you see through the trees in the storm.’
My mother seemed charmed. ‘Stop playing with the cat,’ she said. ‘He might start a fire!’ But I was thinking abstractedly. Is nature a gigantic cat? If so, who strokes its back? It can only be God I concluded. Here I was, only three years old, and already philosophizing.
However stupefying the first observation, something still more wonderful was to come. It was getting darker, and soon the candles were lighted. Macak took a few steps through the room. He shook his paws as though he were treading on wet ground. I looked at him attentively. Did I see something or was it an illusion? I strained my eyes and perceived distinctly that his body was surrounded by a halo like the aureola of a saint!
I cannot exaggerate the effect of this marvelous light on my childish imagination. Day day I have asked myself ‘what is electricity?’ and found no answer. Eighty years have gone by since that time and I still ask the same question, unable to answer it. Some pseudoscientist, of whom there are only too many, may tell you that he can, but do not believe him. If any of them know what it is, I would also know, and my chances are better than any of them, for my laboratory work and practical experience are more extensive, and my life covers three generations of scientific research.
A Dogged Playfulness
Who better to explore the high EQ (entertainment quotient) of dogs than the actor and comedian Tracey Ullman who has adopted more strays than she can count and herself has a canine personality (eager to please and wantonly extravagant).
In her Kennel Club, you’ll find Virginia Woolf’s imaginative essay on Flush (Elizabeth Barret Browning’s cocker spaniel) and Vita Sackville’s argument for the value of the mongrel (though Vita gave Leonard Woolf a pure-bred spaniel to keep him occupied while she monopolized his more interesting wife). Shakespeare’s thoughts on dogs sidle up to those of animal rights activist Bridget Bardot. And what else is there to sniff? Roald Amundsen’s sled dogs on an expedition to the South Pole, and J.R. Ackerley’s frustrations with his ill-behaved dog Tulip.
Top prize, however, goes to British television personality Miranda Hart, musing on her life with Peggy, a cross between a Shi-Tzu and a Bichon Frise, “who always looks at me as if she understands me.” Don’t expect her to fawn over her new puppy. Hart achieves her aim—proving the superiority of the canine—by considering everything dogs are not. Dogs are superior, she argues, because felines are psychotic and their owners downright ditzy. But never mind; this essay captivated even the Cat Lady on our staff because Hart is….So. Damned. Funny.
Dogs are better than cats. There, I’ve said it. Those who are now leaving the room in horror, cat in hand, please come back, for I have plenty more to say on the subject. I wouldn’t dream of making such a statement and then vanishing in a puff of smoke; I must back up my bold assertion, and I’d like to devote this, what I will call, Interlude, to arguing my case with all the bounce and vim of a beagle who’s just spied a joint of lamb. We shall now launch into Miranda’s Bold and Bouncy Argument As to Why Dogs Are Better Than Cats. Such fun.
Let’s kick off – perhaps a little unfairly – with a look at the Nutty Cat Owners. I would argue that the sheer number of mad-as-a-brush cat owners is all the evidence one needs of the essential superiority of dogs. Of course, I’m well aware that dog ownership can drive a person mildly crackers (please refer to my earlier musings on the cross-section of Extreme Dog Owners to be found in my local park), and I’m also aware that I myself am at risk of becoming a crazy dog owner, absolutely yes (I have written a WHOLE BOOK about my dear dog, for heaven’s sake) – but I’d argue that Cat Nutters are approximately 1,473 percent nuttier than your average Dog Nutter (all statistics in this book are 87.5 percent made up). Reasons to follow. I think this calls for a list. Who doesn’t love a little list?
1. Anthropomorphizing and humanizing cats. This is of course the prime manifestation of most animal related nuttiness, but also the one that gives an enormous amount of joy to us owners. And it officially appears so, so much madder with a cat than a dog. For example… oh, hold on, I think there’s going to be a list within a list. Well, this is TREMENDOUS.
i. Costumes. If you put, say, a little Spiderman costume on a dog to protect it from the rain it looks rather natty. Dapper. Happy to be togged up and hoping it’s off to a party. Put an identical costume on a cat and it looks like a rugby player who’s passed out on a stag night and woken up to find his friends have dressed him in a French Maid’s outfit. The cat looks, in short, abused.
ii. Handbags. If you put a dog in a handbag (by which I mean something like a Chihuahua in a Burberry shoulder bag, not trying to stuff an Alsatian into a rucksack) it looks fine. Rather impressive, even. Smart. Kardashian-esque. If you were to put a cat in a bag and bring it to work, you’d look like the very maddest of the mad. You might as well wear a wetsuit to your Zumba class. Or marry your photocopier.
iii. The way you interact with your pet. If you were to look at your dog and say, ‘Buttons the Dog looks sad. Would you like a cuddle, Buttons?’ you’d be thought of as a caring pet owner. If you were to do exactly the same to a cat, you’d be thought of as a merry lunatic, most likely projecting your own emotions onto the poor blank animal in the absence of any meaningful human contact. And I think we must all be honest about the vast difference between looking into the eyes of a cat, and the eyes of a dog. If, and please allow me a moment of poetry here, if a dog’s eyes are like a fast-moving film reel of feelings, all of them sincere, most of them extreme (Devastation! Love! Hope! JOY! Devastation! LOVE!), then staring into a cat’s eyes is like staring into a still oily puddle which may or may not turn out to conceal a bottomless pit. Unfathomable. Mysterious. Blank. At very best, a cat’s eyes are those of that girl in your class at school, the one who was so effortlessly beautiful and chic that she didn’t ever have to bother being anything else. Life, to her, was just one big staring contest, and she always won. Well, that’s cats for you.
iv. Leads. When you put a lead on a dog, it’s normal. A dog is meant to be attached to a human via a lead. It is an entirely natural state of affairs. Put a lead on a cat, and you might just as well whack on a T-shirt bearing the slogan ‘I AM A RAMBLING ECCENTRIC, PLEASE GIVE ME A WIDE BERTH OR I WILL COME TO YOU WITH MY WEIRD CAT ON A STRING.’
v. Shows. Ever wonder why there isn’t a Crufts for cats? Thought not. Because we all know that Crufts for cats would be completely knockout, stone-cold mental. Fact. Imagine trying to train a cat to go up and down a seesaw and in and out of poles. It would stare at you as if saying, ‘Piss off, I’m late for Newsnight.’ Plus, you’d be back at needing to put a cat on a lead.
Now, if we can interlude within the Interlude – I know, I don’t want to confuse you, especially as I have just listed within a list, but try and keep up, MDRC, I can’t help being a literary maverick – I need to nip those of you asking ‘yes, but who puts a cat on a lead?’ in the bud. For I have witnessed this event, twice. Once on a pavement in a busy shopping street in Chiswick, West London. A woman brazenly walking a cat on a colourful ribbon as if it were perfectly normal (please note, a ribbon – Chiswick is frightfully middle-class, no pieces of string here). However confidently this woman walked her cat on a ribbon, she looked CERTIFIABLE. There are a few – and only a very few, I’m afraid – people who can get away with this sort of thing. I would imagine Helena Bonham-Carter could get away with it. And also maybe Grayson Perry.
Generally Americans can get away with cats on leads far better, which brings me to my second cat on-lead sighting: a beautiful lady out walking some kind of pedigree puss in New York’s Central Park. She seemed to carry it – and her leopard-print leggings and matching jacket, hat, shoes, socks and velveteen scrunchie – off rather well. But I think we can chalk that up as one of the many things Americans can do which British people somehow can’t.
