The Philosopher's Cat

Annie Dillard was born on April 30, 1945. In a lovely essay, (not the subject of this note), called the "Death of a Moth," published in the May, 1976, issue of Harper 's, Dillard describes her then two cats, one yellow, one black, who "sleep on her legs."  

  Jerry Seinfeld's birthday is April 29, (1954). His eponymous t.v. series, featured his buddy George, who accidentally starved a cat to death, and the whole show, demonstrates an odd urban take on the world. Not able yet to specify it, but the cat incident will be in there, when I do successfully define the "Seinfeld" world view.

Harper Lee was born on April 28, 1926. Her use of the cat as a metaphor shows how old stereotypes of cats persist, and perhaps, because they are accurate. She describes a deceitful woman in "To Kill A Mockingbird" as a "steady-eyed cat with a twitchy tail."

  Hart Crane died on April 27, 1932, a young, spent, good, writer. The stanza from his poem, "Chaplinesque" evokes cats accurately, and a peculiar American longing. For we can still love the world, who find A famished kitten on the step, and know Recesses for it from the fury of the street, Or warm torn elbow coverts.

David Hume, the Scottish philosopher, was born on April 26, 1711. In his "Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding," Hume distinguishes between experience, the origin of ideas, and ideas using a cat as an example. You see a cat, and this is experience. You remember seeing the cat later, and this is a idea, the idea of a cat. Sounds simple. Like a ball of tangled yarn. (his cat said this last.)

Padgett Powell was born on April 25, 1952. His work, published in the New Yorker, has been described as in "the southern literary tradition." Whatever that means, we have this excerpt from his story, "Mrs. Hollingsworth's Men:" "He looked like the kind of cat who would bite you on the neck to hold you down." This quote makes me wonder if the author, who knows men, knows anything about tomcats.

Sarah Kirsch (April 16, 1935 to May 5, 2013) was a poet. She was born in Limlingerode (Germany),  studied in Halle and Leipzig, and until 1977 she lived in East Berlin. From what I can tell from her  Der Spiegel  obituary, she was married to fellow writer Rainer Kirsch from 1960 to 1968. Her first major publication was titled  Spells  (1973). Google translates the critical reaction to  Spells  this way:  The writer Adolf Endler praised it as " the freest in sexual or erotic ways of poems from all over the known to us ( and relevant ) German woman poetry "    I don't know how dramatic her move to West Berlin in 1977 was. She has been much honored for her writing, and she also was a painter. She lived many years in her home in Schleswig-Holstein. Not a lot of her writing is available in English but we have a volume translated by Marina Roscher, ‎and edited by Charles M. Fishman. This 1991 publication has an introduction by Carolyn For...

  Henry James, describing his country solitude in the England where he made his home, says in a letter "It is only that in my situation...there isn't a cat (but only my dear little yellow dog) to speak to; which counts at times as a positive element of bliss." This quote is in a letter to Grace Norton, and dates from the early 20th century. I include it here as an example of the more open prose of James' later years. He was born on April 15, 1843, and died February 28, 1916.

Arnold Joseph Toynbee, the author of the Study of History,  was born on April 14, 1889. Toynbee's work was  a multi-volumed attempt to find patterns in history, and thus demonstrate that c ivilizations could be  understood, the same way we explicate the nature of  various species. His uncle was also a historian, and also named Arnold Toynbee. The elder Toynbee wrote about the industrial revolution. Our Toynbee edited a selection of his uncle's writings, and one metaphor he included, to illustrate international politics, was this:  "Twisting the lion's tail ceases to be rewarding if the lion shrinks to the size of a cat."

  Jean de la Fontaine died on April 13, 1695. He is widely regarded as a great French poet. He also collected fables and it is these that bring us our cat story. The Duchess of Bouillon, had him separate out of his fables all those involving cats, and bind them in a separate manuscript for her.

  James Schuyler, an American poet, died on April 12, 1991. His writing won a Pulitzer in 1980. Schuyler seems not to have been a cat lover, more a cat tolerator, as in the calmness with which he relays the news that the cat "Danny Rex," uses the bathtub for a litter box.

  All hail Christopher Smart,  who was born on April 11, 1722. He was considered crazy by his contemporaries, partly because he loved his cat so much. And wrote wonderful poetry about his cat, verses which are famous now. (The poem the following lines were taken from, was not actually published until the 1930s.) Here are some lesser known lines from Smart's  Jubilate Agno : ... 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 this is done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness. For then he leaps up to catch the musk, which is the blessing of God upon his prayer. For he rolls upon prank to work it in. For having done duty and received blessing he begins to consider himself. For this he performs in ten degrees. For first he looks upon his forepaws to see if they are clean. For secondly he kicks up behind to clear ...

  Faith McNulty died on April 10th, 2005. She was a writer for the  New Yorker  and her husband also was thusly credentialed. Her nature writing includes a cat book I have mentioned before, Wholly Cats (1962). But here we are, into year twelve of our almanac, and so I am mentioning now an inclusion McNulty authored in the book, Chicken Soup for the Pet Lover's Soul . It is called "Mousekeeping." Actually that book, in which she was included, grates on my nerves, and those of all the chickens I haven't met.

  Francis Bacon, famous for a formulation of the scientific method, died on April 9, 1626. One of his ideas was that men should study nature, so they would know how to interpret the Bible. In his Essays , he refers to the "Wisdom of Rats," and we are using our cat space here to specify this wisdom. Apparently the phrase comes from Pliny's Natural History , where it is stated: "When a house is ready to tumble down, the mice go out of it before; and first of all the spiders with their webs fall down.."

Nijinski died on April 8, 1950. His star turns when he played the lead in Igor Stravinski's ballets, have been compared to feline feats, but the critics say no camera ever really captured his incredible talent onstage. His last years were sad and it seems like he was crushed really, by social attitudes he could not comprehend.

According to https://fancyclopedia.org : "Terry Carr was a fan , sf writer, and editor . He discovered fandom in 1949, and became an enthusiastic publisher of fanzines . Despite a long career as a science fiction professional , he continued to participate as a fan until his death from congestive heart failure. He won the 1959 Best Fanzine Hugo, the  1973 Best Fan Writer Hugo , the  1985 Best Professional Editor Hugo and the  1987 Best Professional Editor Hugo ." Terry Carr wrote, with his wife, the volume of stories: Some Are Born Cats. (1973). This American author's dates are February 19, 1937 to April 7, 1987.

  Isaac Asimov died on April 6, 1992. He is most famous as a science fiction writer. To me however, his distinguishing characteristics are his polymathic book writing talents. Not that I do know of a book he wrote about cats.  Even so, one of his autobiographies mentions his love of cats.

Some of the best work of a bad poet is about cats. Algernon Swinburne was born on April 5, 1837. When he wrote these lines: Stately, kindly, lordly friend, Condescend Here to sit by me, and turn Glorious eyes that smile and burn, Golden eyes, love's lustrous meed, On the golden page I read.

  Oliver Goldsmith was an acclaimed playwright ( She Stoops to Conquer), but he began his career as an impoverished medical student. Even as a poor student, his love for cats was such that he had been able to keep, in his own words, "a skeleton, [and] a cat". He died on April 4, 1774.

The Duchess of Windsor's jewelry was auctioned on April 3, 1987. This presumably includes the bracelet shaped like a panther. This bracelet, designed to curve around the wrist, is one the most widely copied designs in costume jewelry history.

  April 2, 1513 is the date assigned to Ponce de Leon's discovery of the land we now call Florida. The land of flowers would be his doom--later he would be killed by a poison arrow in a battle with the Calusa indians, in southwest Florida. How often do we hear that these indians maintained some kind of independence until the 18th century? More to the point, these indians carved wooden statues of cats. Statues that to me look like domestic cats, (and have been carbon dated to the 15th century) although theoretically the domestic cat did not predate the European invasion.