A Book of Cats

Book excerpt: The cat -- a goddess, an enigma, a playmate and a friend. Dorothy M. Stuart approaches her subject along four main roads: archaeology, history, legend and literature. The Ancient Egyptian Mau is here; the enchanted cats of Irish legend; the Gib of Gammer Gurton s Needle. Hodge and Selima, Jeffry and Dinah refused to be left out; but there are less familiar examples, too: the cat which voluntarily shared the Earl of Southampton s captivity in the Tower; the kitten in whose defence John Keats had a stand up fight with a brutal butcher-boy of Hampstead; the delinquent who at dead of night gnawed the strings of her master s lute. Graymalkin, the witches familiar, comes into the picture; and we catch fascinating glimpses of two furry sympathizers licking the tears from Florence Nightingale s cheeks, and of Cardinal Richelieu solemnly adding something on behalf of a cat and her kittens to the modest pension assigned by His Eminence to Mademoiselle Marie de Gournay, Montaigne s polished female friend. Dorothy M. Stuart is better known for her elegant and polished biographies, but in this short book we see a lighter side of her pen in an appreciation of feline company.