A selection of poems about dogs can only be followed by a selection about cats.
The poet who is perhaps most associated with feline poetry is of course T.S. Eliot who wrote Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats which was the basis for the musical Cats. I encourage you to read “Macavity, the Mystery Cat” or “Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat”.
In prose, I have always enjoyed Terry Pratchett’s take on the cat attitude:
In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this.
Dogs are not like cats, who amusingly tolerate humans only until someone comes up with a tin opener that can be operated with a paw.
Men at Arms
Maurice watched them argue again. Humans, eh? Think they’re lords of creation. Not like us cats. We know we are. Ever see a cat feed a human? Case proven.
The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents
Emily Dickinson once again provides an opening with “She Sights a Bird—She Chuckles—”; and Thomas Gray’s “Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat” and A.E. Housman’s “The African Lion” both tell cautionary tales.
Links
- Watch Count Arthur Strong read Macavity on YouTube.
Poem 139. She Sights a Bird—She Chuckles—
She runs without the look of feet—
Emily Dickinson (1830—1886)
Her eyes increase to Balls—
She sights a Bird—she chuckles—
She flattens—then she crawls—
She runs without the look of feet—
Her eyes increase to Balls—
Her Jaws stir—twitching—hungry—
Her Teeth can hardly stand—
She leaps, but Robin leaped the first—
Ah, Pussy, of the Sand,
The Hopes so juicy ripening—
You almost bathed your Tongue—
When Bliss disclosed a hundred Toes—
And fled with every one—
Emily Dickinson captures the way her cat hunts birds really well in this short poem: the initial stalking movement with the belly close to the ground, then the moment of action when she (the cat, that is) springs into movement, chasing the robin and leaping at it.
Despite the care she has taken, the robin has evidently been aware of the huntress and at the last moment it flutters upward and escapes its fate, and the description the poet uses is marvellous: “Bliss disclosed a hundred Toes—and fled with every one.”
Poem 140. Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes
Not all that tempts your wandering eyes
Thomas Gray (1716—1771)
And heedless hearts, is lawful prize;
Nor all that glisters, gold.
’Twas on a lofty vase’s side,
Where China’s gayest art had dyed
The azure flowers that blow;
Demurest of the tabby kind,
The pensive Selima, reclined,
Gazed on the lake below.
Her conscious tail her joy declared;
The fair round face, the snowy beard,
The velvet of her paws,
Her coat, that with the tortoise vies,
Her ears of jet, and emerald eyes,
She saw; and purred applause.
Still had she gazed; but ’midst the tide
Two angel forms were seen to glide,
The genii of the stream;
Their scaly armour’s Tyrian hue
Through richest purple to the view
Betrayed a golden gleam.
The hapless nymph with wonder saw;
A whisker first and then a claw,
With many an ardent wish,
She stretched in vain to reach the prize.
What female heart can gold despise?
What cat’s averse to fish?
Presumptuous maid! with looks intent
Again she stretch’d, again she bent,
Nor knew the gulf between.
(Malignant Fate sat by, and smiled)
The slippery verge her feet beguiled,
She tumbled headlong in.
Eight times emerging from the flood
She mewed to every watery god,
Some speedy aid to send.
No dolphin came, no Nereid stirred;
Nor cruel Tom, nor Susan heard;
A Favourite has no friend!
From hence, ye beauties, undeceived,
Know, one false step is ne’er retrieved,
And be with caution bold.
Not all that tempts your wandering eyes
And heedless hearts, is lawful prize;
Nor all that glisters, gold.
This poem tells the rather sad tale of Selima, a very attractive tabby who is attracted to a vase containing a pair of fish and, seduced by the desire to pluck them from their watery home, takes a step too near the edge and slips into the vase. Once in, there is no escape and no-one hears her struggles or her desperate mewling and although she tries eight times to clamber out, the water finally claims her.
Gray had a marvellous turn of phrase which he employs to good effect in his other (and perhaps better known) poem, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”. Here, we see first the Chinese vase painted with bright blue flowers and Selima reposing nearby and gazing into the top of the vessel. Gray describes her in great detail, so she is clearly something of a favourite of his, and then he describes her fatal attraction to the glimmering scales of the fish, her scramble to keep her footing and then the final moments.
Gray draws the parallel between the doomed cat and other mortals whose greed is their downfall: they overstretch their grasp just as Selima does, and their craving for the bright baubles becomes their undoing: “Not all that tempts your wandering eyes and heedless hearts, is lawful prize; nor all that glisters, gold.”
In that final line, Gray evokes the message of Shakespeare’s Portia whose golden casket contains a blunt refusal of the Prince of Morocco’s love, carried in the eye socket of a skull:
All that glisters is not gold,
Often have you heard that told.
Many a man his life hath sold
But my outside to behold.
Gilded tombs do worms infold.
Had you been as wise as bold,
Young in limbs, in judgment old,
Your answer had not been inscroll’d,
Fare you well, your suit is cold.
J.R.R. Tolkien rearranges the phrase in the riddle associated with Strider, the nondescript warrior who protects and guides the hobbits as they journey from Bree to Rivendell in the first part of The Lord of the Rings:
All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.
Here, it suggests the opposite: that things of great value can be concealed by a shabby exterior, just as the rightful king Aragorn hides his nature under the rough appearance of a ranger. In either case, the moral is clear: look beneath the surface to judge real value.
Poem 141. The African Lion
When he bites off a piece of a boy of that sort
A.E. Housman (1859—1936)
He spits it right out of his mouth,
To meet a bad lad on the African waste
Is a thing that a lion enjoys;
But he rightly and strongly objects to the taste
Of good and uneatable boys.
When he bites off a piece of a boy of that sort
He spits it right out of his mouth,
And retires with a loud and dissatisfied snort
To the east, or the west, or the south.
So lads of good habits, on coming across
A lion, need feel no alarm
For they know they are sure to escape with the loss
Of a leg, or a head, or an arm.
This is a comical poem suggesting that lions prefer the taste of “bad lads” to that of “good lads” who can expect to escape with the mere loss of “a leg, or a head, or an arm.” Of course, it can be argued that a good lad is unlikely to view the loss of these items as insignificant.
This reminds me of Marriot Edgar’s tale of “Albert and the Lion” from Poet’s Day 12, too.