Read with a Cat

Writers and their cats are often discussed. The animal is cast as the best friend of the pen-wielding human, forming a perfectly harmonious duo. The idea is perpetuated that writing and keeping a cat go hand in hand. Evidence of this natural affinity is cited in the perceived parallels between the two figures—both creatures of solitude. But above all, it is the writer’s need for the cat that is emphasised. Aldous Huxley recommended that aspiring writers should acquire a cat. Did not Victor Hugo have his Chanoine, revered like royalty, and George Sand her Minou, whom she allowed to dine from her breakfast bowl? But can one truly write with a cat in tow?

Pierre Loti, who clung to his Moumouttes as a child clings to a teddy bear, reminds us that the relationship is, in truth, a form of servitude: the cat insists on its master’s company. It is not hard to imagine Loti, returning from his exotic travels to sit at his desk, enduring the same torment as his mother and Aunt Claire on winter evenings, when Moumoutte would climb uninvited onto the worktable and unravel their balls of wool. For while the cat loves high places, it loves most of all not to be forgotten, parading at eye level as if to reduce the world to its own scale. It also delights in the feel of its paws on paper—preferably Japanese—and will curl up luxuriously upon it. The pen and the nib irritate and provoke it. In the modern version of the profession, the computer mouse is poorly named, for the cat shares none of our obsession with screens and the virtual. It will always prefer paper, wool, and felt. And laps. The cat disrupts the writer who does not adopt the motionless postures of great meditators. Yet Loti could not bring himself to disturb the little creature that, half-closing one eye, would bat playfully at his pen.

Nevertheless, books have been written with cats. And the bookseller, heir to these creations negotiated with felines, must sometimes gently shoo away cats that would like to gnaw on them. But that is another story.