The cat dumped a load in a Kleenex box
Happy International Cat Day
It’s 8th August, which means it’s International Cat Day, which means I have no option but to bombard you with cat-related letters. A handful of these can also be found in my book, Letters of Note: Cats, signed and gift-wrapped copies of which can be found here.
The cat, after your leaving him, seemed not certain of his character or his place and we changed his name to Delmore which immediately made him more vivid. The first sign of his vividness came when he dumped a load in a Kleenex box while I was suffering from a cold. During a paroxysm of sneezing I grabbed for some Kleenex. I shall not overlook my own failures in this tale but when I got the cat shit off my face and the ceiling I took Delmore to the kitchen door and drop-kicked him into the clothesyard. This was an intolerable cruelty and I have not yet been forgiven. He is not a forgiving cat.
John Cheever
Letter to Josie Herbst
6th December 1963
—The Letters of John Cheever
We had a dark grey cat called Tom. He was reserved, domineering, voluptuous–much as I imagine Tiber to be. When he was middle-aged he gave up nocturnal prowlings and slept on my bed, against my feet. One evening I was reading in bed when I became aware that Tom was staring at me. I put down my book, said nothing, watched. Slowly, with a look of intense concentration, he got up and advanced on me, like Tarquin with ravishing strides, poised himself, put out a front paw, and stroked my cheek as I used to stroke his chops. A human caress from a cat. I felt very meagre and ill-educated that I could not purr.
David Garnett
Letter to Sylvia Townsend Warner
June 1973
—Sylvia and David: The Townsend Warner/Garnett Letters
We have a blue short haired kitten. He has just eaten my pen—hence the difficulty in writing.
Virginia Woolf
Letter to Angelica Bell
21st December 1940
—Letters of Virginia Woolf
My spaniel has seven puppies. My cat has five kittens. The spaniel steals the kittens, and, carrying them very carefully in her mouth, puts them into the puppies’ basket. She then goes out for a stroll and the cat in search of her progeny curls up in the basket and suckles the puppies. The spaniel returns, chases out the cat, curls up in the basket, and suckles the kittens. I find myself quite unable to cope with this situation.
Vita Sackville-West
Letter to Virginia Woolf
8th September 1925
—Love Letters: Vita and Virginia
In case you are in hospital or in bed and want to be amused or informed, let's say, there are eleven cats here. One cat just leads to another. The mother is Tester a Persian from the Silver Dawn Cattery somewhere in Florida. She had a kitten named Thruster out of Dillinger a black and white cat from Cojimar a coastal fishing village. By the same sire she also bore Furhouse, Fats, Friendless and Friendless's Brother. All in the same litter. Two lovely black Persian appearings and two Black and Whites like Dingie. We also have a grey, sort of snow leopard cat named Uncle Wolfer (Persian) and a Tiger cat from Guanabacoa named Good Will after Nelson Rockerfeller. There are at present two half grown kittens named Blindie (on acct. of Blindness. Born that way) daughter of Thruster and her own father. That shows us eh fat lady? And Nuisance Value also known as Littless Kitty who is the most beautiful of all with a purr-purr that would blast you out of the hospital.
The place is so damned big it doesn't really seem as though there were many cats until you see them all moveing like a mass migration at feeding time.
Ernest Hemingway
Letter to Hadley Mowrer
25th November 1943
—Selected Letters of Ernest Hemingway
My only comment is that of Puck upon mortals. I fear that to me Siamese cats belong to the fauna of Mordor, but you need not tell the cat breeder that.
J. R. R. Tolkien
Letter to his publisher1
14 October 1959
—The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien
The cats keep coming into the yard, six of them every day, and Quiz drives them out. If I should send Quiz to you to drive the cows away from your rhubarb he would not be here to drive the cats out of the yard. If six cats should keeping coming into the yard every day and not go out, in a week there would be 42 of them and in a month 180 and before you came back next November 1260. Then if there should be 1260 cats in the yard before next November half of them at least would have kittens and if half of them should have 6 kittens apiece, there would be more than 5000 cats and kittens in the yard. There would not be any place for Rosanna to spread the clothes unless she drove them all off the grass plot, and if she did they would have to crowd at the end of the yard nearest the house, and if they did that they would make a great pile as high as the top of my windows. A pile of 5000 cats and kittens, some of them black ones, in front of my window would make my office so dark I should not be able to write in it. Besides that those underneath, particularly the kittens, would be hurt by those standing on top of them and I expect they would make such a great squalling all the time that I should not be able to sleep, and if I was not able to sleep, I should not be able to work, and if I did not work I should not have any money, and if I had not any money, I could not send any to Plymouth to pay your fare back on the Fall River boat, and I could not pay my fare to go to Plymouth and so you and I would not ever see each other any more.
Frederick Law Olmsted
Letter to this son
13th May 1875
—The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted
Sometimes she looks at me with a rather peculiar expression (she is the only cat I know who will look you straight in the eye) and I have a suspicion that she is keeping a diary, because the expression seems to be saying: “Brother, you think you’re pretty good most of the time, don’t you? I wonder how you’d feel if I decided to publish some of the stuff I’ve been putting down at odd moments.” At certain times she has a trick of holding one paw up loosely and looking at it in a speculative manner. My wife thinks she is suggesting we get her a wrist watch; she doesn’t need it for any practical reason – she can tell the time better than I can – but after all you gotta have some jewelry.
Raymond Chandler
Letter to Charles Morton
19th March 1945
—Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler
We smuggled two kittens in from Mexico. One has a black moustache and constantly bumps into things and therefore had to be named Clouseau. The other leaps out at him from behind doors and cupboards and is known as Cato.
Kenneth Tynan
Letter to Adrian and Celia Mitchell
2nd February 1980
—Kenneth Tynan: Letters
I had a visitor last evening, the nicest visitor I’ve had since I’ve been home. I heard something at the door and when I opened it there was a mewing kitten which wouldn’t go away and clearly was visiting me. It wasn’t a stray, it was tiny, plump, wellfed, but it insisted on coming in. I gave it a small drink of milk. Its purr sounded all over the house. It wasn't a ‘pretty’ cat—nondescript grey and white and eyes set very close together, but it was a cat with a cat’s grace. After it had drunk the milk it explored the sitting room and my study and walked to the front door and back. Then it peed in a small tray I put down for it. Then it came to the sitting-room and washed itself. Then it climbed on my knee and purred and purred and snuggled. Next it explored and played. It skated on the kitchen floor, rushed up and down, skating from end to end, it climbed on the table and sat and fell asleep on the typing paper, then it rushed to the study and ran round and round the chair, all the time purring loudly with a loosely-beaded purr. Sometimes it meowed and | spoke to it in meows. Then it went to the back door, opened the door, said goodbye, and the kitten went home to wherever it lives—I’ve never seen it before and there’s no sign of it today, but it was a delightful visitor. I can’t think why it came to me but I’ve at last decided that the old dark grey tom who nests under the apple tree in the garden is some relation and it happened one day to see this little kitten, and suggested, Why don’t you go to visit Janet Frame one evening? Get some practice in visiting people, as part of your education. All you do, as guest, is go in, have a drink of milk, a pee, a wash, a cuddle and a play—it’s quite simple but you need practice—there, dart up to the door now and pretend you're starving, and once in, do your stuff. You have to learn some time how to handle people.
Janet Frame
Letter to William Theophilus Brown
July 1970
—Jay to Bee: Janet Frame’s Letters to William Theophilus Brown
My Kitten Cat is lovelier than ever — Maybe I love her too much — Maybe it is something in me that I have to spend on something alive that is beautiful to me — I am quite amused with my love for her — and I like her being so sure that I like her — her certainty is one of the nicest things about her —
Georgia O’Keeffe
Letter to Jean Toomer
7th January 1934
—Georgia O’Keeffe: Art and Letters
Oh! darling, Thom needs a pet so badly and today one of his friends offered him a kitten and he wants it so dreadfully. He brought it up very casually and offhand—and kind of deadly. I mean in a dead manner as though he knew I would refuse to let him have it. His mother had refused. And he really needs it. And I had to make a judgment. The richness of having the kitten against the heartbreak of not being able to take it to New York with him. In the morning if he wants it, he can have it even if he does have to give it up. To refuse him would be like refusing love because you might get hurt and that’s the best I can do.
John Steinbeck
Letter to Elaine Scott
20th August 1949
—Steinbeck: A Life in Letters
My precious little companion is gone. I imagine I shall have talked to you before this reaches you and you will know. I sat up late with him in the living room, then carried him into the bedroom and closed the door so I could check on him more easily during the night. About 3:30 I was wakened by the sound of his difficult breathing, with little moans, and found him lying at the door. I sat on the floor beside him for some time, stroking him and talking to him. Finally he got up and went under the bed. That is where he died this morning, I think just before Roger left for school. We both heard him cry just as we finished breakfast. We came in and Roger reported he was under the bed. I could not see him well, but after Roger left I got down with a flash light and then I knew. In a few minutes Ida came, and she moved the bed so I could lift him out and hold him in my arms. Then we curled him up in the little battered oval basket he loved so well. I will have Elliott bury him out under the pine trees by the study, a place that I should think would never be disturbed.
Rachel Carson
Letter to Dorothy Freeman
18th December 1963
—Always, Rachel: The Letters of Rachel Carson and Dorothy Freeman
There is a rumor rampant that in order to give a concert I must kill a cat. It came about this way: [American composer] Frederic Rjewski who lives now in Rome gave a program and the critic said the next day in print that he might have killed a cat —there were such sounds. This was relayed to the rest of the European press. The German Cultural Office then sent a general letter to all the cities here that Rjewski should not be permitted to play in Deutschland. Friends in Munich who had arranged a concert for him studied the matter and did some research and then informed the Office that no cats had suffered in Rome. However the story sticks in people’s minds, and they now connect it with avant-gardism, and so people actually expect us to kill a cat during a program! Even on the other side of the Iron Curtain. Well, the Devil is on the Earth.
John Cage
Letter to M. C. Richards
24th May 1963
—The Selected Letters of John Cage
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Tolkien was writing in response to a request from a Cambridge cat breeder who wished to name a litter of Siamese kittens after characters from The Lord of the Rings. ‘Puck’ is a mischievous fairy from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, known for causing chaos and making the famous remark, “Lord, what fools these mortals be!”
Cats and Their Cat People. Just love them. As I have loved the dozens of cats I've taken in over my lifetime. It awes me to think that I can love something/someone so much. And, yes, they're all a little crazy.
Well, cats love boxes.