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On Cats: An Anthology, introduction by Margaret Atwood and photographs by Elliot Ross, Notting Hill Editions, 2021. 84 pgs.
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Cats are a curious and ancient animal choice for human companionship. We have a complicated, not entirely comfortable relationship with them, and they to us. They have and continue to reveal as much about the individuals who choose to be near them, and the cultures they belong toโquite possibly moreโthan they do about themselves.
Margaret Atwood writes across boundaries, having published a dizzying array of genre fiction, non-fiction, poetry, essays, scripts, and libretti, also editing many anthologies. She considers herself both a public figure and a very private person, on the centre-right politically, yet also a passionate feminist, environmentalist, and human rights activist. She is, in a world where it is admired and despised, independence personified. Atwood lives and works in defiance of easy categorisation, not unlike her favourite type of pet.
In her introduction to this anthology, Atwood tells of her childhood longing that led to a lifelong relationship with cats. Her reminiscences are humorous, engaging, and also sad, like many great love stories. For that is what this anthology is to me: a compilation of memorable love letters, stories, diary entries, poems, and aphorisms. Here is love unrequited, its heartbreaking loss, its cruelty, inconstancy, and of course, for some, its consummate joy. The people in these stories have found a soulmate, and in each case, it is a cat.
In Tove Janssonโs From the Summer Book (1972), we meet Sophia, a little girl hopelessly in love with her defiantly independent cat, Moppy. Moppy refuses to be anything but what he is, the son of a fishermanโs cat, born to hunt, and happiest in solitude or when asleep.
โYou know,โ Sophia said, โsometimes I think I hate Moppy. I donโt have the strength to go on loving him, but I think about him all the time!โ
The outcome of this delightfully cautionary tale is familiar to anyone who has had a break-up with someone theyโve tried to change and truly love.
The oldest piece, and one of my favourites in the anthology, Pangur Bรกn, is a ninth-century Old Irish poem, translated here by W.H. Auden (1954). While Sophia and Moppy have a relationship that feels woefully lopsided, Pangur and her scribe monk friend live together happily, respectful of their differences.
โPangur, white Pangur, How happy we are
Alone together, scholar and catโฆ
Pleased with his own art, neither hinders the other;
Thus we live ever without tedium and envy.โ
โExcerpt from On Cats
Not all cats are as lucky in love.
Lou Andreas-Salomรฉโs diary recounting (1913) a cat from Freudโs study, a cat he grew fond of but which remained aloof, seems more illustrative of Freud himself than the aberrant behaviour he ascribes to it. Just who, or what, is being reflected here? The cat in this story seems to me to be perfectly normal. I think most cats prefer their own company to that of static antiques and Freudโs tapping shoe.
If one can accept the aspects and limitations of a catโs affection, a life-long fondness for their kind often develops. Hemingwayโs love for them became generational and large. Writing to his beloved first wife from his Florida home in the Second World War (1943), Hemingway seemed at ease sharing his home and grounds with 11 cats. He admires their independence, mentioning how they guilelessly disappear into the landscape. He rarely sees them except for dinner. That lack of contact in no way lessens his love for them.
Disappearing is something cats do well. They were ghosting people thousands of years before people did. Lewis Carrollโs Cheshire Cat from Aliceโs Adventures In Wonderland (1865) is a marvel of pithy, slightly disturbing logic. When the Cheshire Cat fades to a smile, astonishing Alice, it may be a mad act but is eminently cat-like.
What is the price we pay for loving a creature so unlike us, from kittenhood to death? Rebecca Westโs 1956 story of her relationship with her cat, Pounce, reveals how much a love lost costs, and why it might be worth it.
Not all cats can die with dignity, or when sickness or old age take them.
Bohumil Hrabalโs (1965) tale of his country cats is full of his obsessive love for them, fatefully tinged with anxiety. Not entirely sure of his ability to care for, much less love his catโs kittens, he contemplates drowning at least some of them. It is a cruel act, it will haunt him, and he will do it. No thought of spaying or neutering here. Hrabalโs is a love that admires his catsโ freedom, and their fecundity, yet exacts a terrifying price for it.
Just before the aphorisms that end the book, Alice Walkerโs musings on her country cat, Frida, recount a hopeful, more equitable relationship. Walker sees her cat Frida as having agency and deeply respects that, attempting not to control love but to understand and honour it. She thinks of Frida as not only a companion but as a powerful spiritual entity, a familiar. Walker believes her love for Frida is for a being that shares with her a karmic, ancient, and indelible history. This may be so.
The love stories in On Cats are many and variable, beautifully written, and soulful. Yet impressively large holes remain. An anthology by definition acknowledges its preferences and its incompleteness. Missing from this collection are the love stories of cats and people from Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Oceania, and South America. That is an immense hole that I hope another anthology will do justice to. Those stories, just as the ones collected in this volume, are part of my story, and the story of cats. I long to see more of these stories translated, and anthologised, to be shared and felt by English readers, and cat admirers, everywhere.
How to cite: McDonald, Marsha. โThe People in These Stories Have Found a SoulmateโOn Cats: An Anthology.โ Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 26 Mar. 2024, chajournal.blog/2024/03/26/cats.
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Marsha McDonald lives in Vilar de Andorinho, Portugal. An artist and writer, she works and exhibits between North America, Europe, and Asia. She has received grants from the Pollock-Krasner, Puffin, Mary Nohl (travel), Lynden Sculpture Garden, Gallery 224 Artservancy (artist working within conserved land in Wisconsin USA), and a New York Fellowship. Her writing has appeared in Otoliths (Australia), The Drum and The Cantabrigian (Cambridge MA), Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine, Cha (Hong Kong), and La Piccioleta Barca (Milan). She has collaborated with artists and writers in the UK, France, Spain, Germany, Portugal, North America, and Japan. In 2024, she will be an arts resident at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Ireland and Studio Kura in Kyushu, Japan. Visit her website for more information. [All contributions by Marsha McDonald.]