Our cat Sid was killed this morning, hit by a car. These few random thoughts are in his memory.
Sid and his sister Nancy were named, not after Sid Vicious and his partner Nancy Spungen as some of our friends initially thought, but after the far more congenial proletarian lovers in Benjamin Britten’s ‘Albert Herring’. Sid, the butcher’s boy and Nancy ‘from the bakery’ provide the relatively straightforward romantic counterpoint to Albert’s repressed longings for freedom of various kinds. Our cat Sid lacked the breezy simplicity of his operatic namesake, spending a lot of time craving either our attention (literally ‘reaching out’ to pat us when he felt ignored) or ‘Dreamies’ his cat snack of choice. Over the years he also developed an impressive and varied vocal repertoire which extended far beyond ‘miaow’, and included the cat noise James Joyce transliterated as ‘mkgnao’, which as far as we can tell meant ‘hello’ – Sid certainly greeted us with this sound when meeting us again after any prolonged period of absence and, extended his variety of sounds when concerned about some disruption to his routine or to what he regarded as the norm – unfamiliar visitors, our packing to go away, family worries or upset and so on. From the above, you’ll probably gather that Sid was not just ‘like’ a member of our family, he was part of it, and his loss leaves an aching chasm in our midst.
The pain is eased somewhat by considering writers and musicians who have loved cats as much as we do. T.S. Eliot comes readily to mind, and while ‘Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats’ is ‘only’ light verse it is light verse of a very superior kind. His description of a cat contemplating his ‘secret name’ is excellent.
When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular name.
Gavin Ewart is very good on cats: his ‘Fourteen Year Old Convalescent Cat in Winter’ is marvellous and poignant.
I want him to have another living summer
to lie in the sun and enjoy the douceur de vivre
-because the sun, like golden rum in a rummer,
is what makes an idle cat un tout petit peu ivre -
I want him to lie stretched out, contented,
revelling in the heat, his fur all dry and warm,
an Old Age Pensioner, retired, resented
by no one, and happinesses in a beelike swarm
to settle on him, postponed for another season
that last fated hateful journey to the vet
from which there is no return (and age the reason),
which must soon come - as I cannot forget.
We have been fortunate that most of our cats have had long lives and we have indeed been able to accompany them on ‘that last fated hateful journey’ and have been able to say our goodbyes. Sid died in the prime of life and was unable to hear the words we said over his grave.
Jack Kerouac, Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, Doris Lessing, George Macbeth, Ruth Pitter and Elizabeth Jennings are just a few of the writers who loved cats, and Benjamin Britten, Samuel Barber, Rossini, Armstrong Gibbs and Poulenc have written memorable settings of cat poems, but special mention must be made of Dr Samuel Johnson and his cat Hodge. Hodge has his own statue outside Johnson’s house in Gough Square and Bowell’s description of Johnson’s relationship with him is, particularly in the present circumstances, almost unbearably moving:
I never shall forget the indulgence with which he treated Hodge, his cat: for whom he himself used to go out and buy oysters, lest the servants having that trouble should take a dislike to the poor creature. I am, unluckily, one of those who have an antipathy to a cat, so that I am uneasy when in the room with one; and I own, I frequently suffered a good deal from the presence of this same Hodge. I recollect him one day scrambling up Dr. Johnson's breast, apparently with much satisfaction, while my friend smiling and half-whistling, rubbed down his back, and pulled him by the tail; and when I observed he was a fine cat, saying, "Why yes, Sir, but I have had cats whom I liked better than this;" and then as if perceiving Hodge to be out of countenance, adding, "but he is a very fine cat, a very fine cat indeed."
Did Johnson really have other cats he liked better than Hodge? I prefer to think not…
A glaring omission thus far has been Christopher Smart’s ‘Cat Jeoffry’. One of the many pleasures of Oliver Soden’s book ‘Jeoffrey – The poet’s cat’, is a description of an imaginary meeting between Jeoffry and Hodge, and the whole book, a minor masterpiece, is a wonderfully imagined account of the life of literature’s greatest cat – the immortal Jeoffry.
For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.
For he is the servant of the Living God, duly and daily serving him.
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.
For is this done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness.
For he knows that God is his saviour…
We shall listen to Britten’s sublime setting of ‘For I will consider my cat Jeoffry’ from ‘Rejoice in the Lamb’ and shed a tear for Sid. Thank you, best of all boys, for being ‘a very fine cat indeed’…
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