The Philosopher's Cat

Reinhold Niebuhr, the American theologian, died on June 1, 1971. He is the author of the "serenity prayer," a claim which someone must have questioned, for he said this about it: "Of course, it may have been spooking around for years, even centuries, but I don't think so. I honestly do believe that I wrote it myself." Niebuhr's wife asked T. S. Eliot to name their poodle pup. This was in 1955. Eliot declined, since, he said, he was a "cat person."

Angus Wilson was a British writer--literary criticism, biography, novels. He died on May 31, 1991. He was such a cat lover, that another critic was surprised Wilson could calmly recount how Kipling, walking with Gilbert Murray, at the age of sixteen, could throw stones at a cat in Kensington Gardens.

May 30, 1778 is the date of Voltaire's death. We glimpse from his book: "In Defense of My Uncle," how the 18th century French viewed Egyptian history: "Nothing was ever more contemptible than the superstition of this people...Cleopatra was no more concerned about [the worship of cats]... than Herod was about those [superstitions] of Judea.  "Diodorus Auletes relates that he saw [Egyptians] massacre a Roman who casually killed a cat. The death of this Roman was well avenged when the Romans governed...Nothing now remains of those unfortunate [Egyptian] priests but their memory which must be forever odious."

  John F. Kennedy was born on May 29, 1917. For our purposes, the  interesting thing is that he had his presidential secretary take the children's cat into her own home.

  May 28, 1931 Stephen Birmingham, born on May 28, 1931, writes well about rich people, and is best known as the author of "Real Lace," and other sociologically slanted histories. He also writes fiction. This quote is from his novel "Barbara Greer." (1959.) "Tiger, his yellow cat, leaped from his lap for some [spilled] milk. "Binky will mop it up dear, but old Mr. Woodcock bent,.. apparently to pull Tiger back to his accustomed place on his lap." Sounds like the rich ARE like you and me.

  May 27, 1564 John Calvin, a Protestant theologian who argued for predestination, was fond of his wife's cat,"Henriette." His wife and his wife's cat died in the same month, and according to J. Stephen Lang, author of 1,001 Things You Always Wanted to Know about Cats, Calvin did not get another wife or another cat. John Calvin died on May 27, 1564.

The scientist and writer, Stephen Jay Gould, died on May 20, 2002. His was a rare ability to convey clearly, complex scientific ideas. For instance in this quote he has to explain how the discoverer of natural selection accounted for the fact the cat has seen little variation physically, throughout the centuries while some other animals showed more variability in species change. Gould quotes Darwin in "The Origin of the Species": "Although I do not doubt that some domestic animals vary less than others, yet the rarity or absence of distinct breeds of the cat...may be attributed in main part to selection not having been brought into play: in cats from the difficulty of pairing them..." Just because I don't understand all this,( the difficulty of pairing them ?) doesn't mean Gould is not a clear writer. Of Darwin's argument above, Gould counts it a rare instance of Darwin resorting to special pleading.

  James Boswell died on May 19, 1795. This Scottish writer did not like cats, but in his zeal to record the personal and "telling" details about certain famous men, he recounts Samuel Johnson's fondness for "Hodge." These details were innovative in biography at the time. His story that Johnson had to shop for Hodge's meals himself, least the servants get to dislike the cat, give us an glimpse into the world of servants in earlier centuries, a glimpse that is disquieting.

Gustav Mahler died on May 18, 1911. The composer, it is said, had a nervous conducting style, and an article in 1905 said caricatures of Mahler were popular in Germany, caricatures showing a silhouette which resembled a cat in convulsions on the rostrum.

Anna Jameson, the Victorian writer, was born on May 17, 1794. An icon of feminist history, Jameson mentions in her memoirs, this metaphor of a cat, "as they say, the little cat that has been scalded, dreads fire and water." Which proverb did not make sense to me til I recalled the obvious: fire was part of the pre-electric household in a vivid way that it is not now.

Studs Terkel was born on May 16, 1912. We miss him and we do not know if his tombstone epitaph actually reads the way he once proposed it should: "Curiosity Never Killed This Cat."

May 15, 1936 is the birthday of Ralph Steadman, the artist and author who was a close friend of Hunter S. Thompson, and in fact, is said by some to have with Thompson, invented gonzo journalism. Steadman, a cat lover who wrote, "The Grapes of Ralph," about a cat, also published "The Book of Jones: A Tribute to the Mercurial, Manic, and Utterly Seductive Cat‎" in 1997 about another pet of his.

  Bill Ballantine died on May 14, 1999. He wrote bad books about bugs. He even managed to make his 1958 book: "Wild Tigers and Tame Fleas," skimmable. Maybe I just expected to much, being spoiled by writers like John McPhee.

  On May 13, 1923, Willa Cather won a Pulitzer Prize for her novel "One of Ours." I never heard of it either. But researching this I found out that the first surviving writing of Cather's is a childhood essay comparing cats and dogs. Dogs are heroic, cats, well, she describes them as "snarling, spitting, cruel." Which gives us a glimpse of cats on the prairie in the 19th century.

Syd Hoff, the New Yorker cartoonist, died on May 12, 2004. He also wrote children's books, lots of them. One was titled "Captain Cat", (1994). This told the story of a striped feline who strays onto an army base.

On this date, May 11, 1949, the country of Siam officially renamed itself Thailand. It is an interesting fact that the cat has been bred rather more carefully in Asia, witness the Siamese cat (still called Siamese), and Himalayan. Nor there did the cat ever suffer the eclipses of fortune which it saw in the west.

 This is how Who's Who writes up composer Debbie Wiseman, with minor reformatting. Wiseman, Debbie   https://doi.org/10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.U4000595 Published online:  01 December 2007 This version:  01 December 2020 Previous version OBE 2018 (MBE 2004) Born   10 May 1963 ;  d  of Paul Wiseman and Barbara Wiseman;  m  1987, Tony Wharmby composer and conductor, film and television scores, since 1984 Education Henrietta Barnett Sch.; Trinity Coll. of Music, London (Saturday Exhibnr); Kingsway-Princeton Morley Coll., London; GSMD (GGSM 1984). FRCM 2020 Career Film scores include:  Tom and Viv, 1994; Haunted, 1995; Wilde, 1997; Lighthouse, 1998; Tom’s Midnight Garden, 1999; Before You Go, 2002; Freeze Frame, Arsène Lupin, 2004; The Truth About Love, 2005; Middletown, 2006; Flood, 2007; Lesbian Vampire Killers, The Hide, 2009; Edie, 2018;  television scores include:  The Good Guys, 1992–93; Warriors, 2000; Judge John Deed, 200...

Ariel Durant married her husband, Will Durant, when she was fifteen. Ariel, born on May 10, 1898, co-authored, with her husband certain of the multi-volumed, "Story of Civilization," books. One has to suspect that it was Ariel who included the detail of Baroness Wilhelmina von Cramm (married on May 8, 1789) loving her cats and dogs more than she loved her husband. Just a guess.

Freya Stark, British traveler, and author, died on May 9, 1993. In her Baghdad Sketches she described how at night sometimes cats jumped through her open bedroom window, from the roof of the mosque next door. She also relayed a quotation about how it takes two cats to produce one kitten, but only one kitten to produce a cat. (This was a joke about the superiority of youth.)

  Edmund Wilson was born on May 8, 1895. This American literary critic had a famous correspondence with Vladimir Nabokov, and though I can't support this, it is possible one reason the authors got along was they shared a similar calmness on the subject of cats.

  Sir James Frazier died on May 7, 1941, during an era which had already begun to question the scholarship which informed this author's "The Golden Bough," and other pioneering titles in anthropology. Frazier promoted the idea that cats were associated with the ancient corn spirit gods in medieval Europe, and later. I have not idea how accurate that is, but I do like Frazier's relaying the story of an American farmer who tried to keep rats out of his granary by leaving the rats a note which described how much better the grain was at a neighbor's barn.

Marchette Chute wrote literary biographies geared for the young. Her children's poetry can be delightful. We excerpt: ... I am The everlasting cat!  Cunning, and old, and sleek as jam... Chute died on May 6, 1973.

  Christoper Morley was born on May 5, 1890. This forgotten writer was in his day a famous literary figure. He was one of the founders of the Saturday Review of Literature and the founder of the Baker Street Irregulars. Morley was one of the first judges for the Book-of-the Month Club. We can estimate why he is forgotten, if we are cranky about the quality of his poetry: ... I saw a proud, mysterious cat,  I saw a proud, mysterious cat,  Too proud to catch a mouse or rat— Mew, mew, mew. ... Still I plan to read a novel of his, The Haunted Bookstore , which must be online.

  It was May 4, 1953 when Hemingway received his Pulitzer Prize. On his island home he collected cats, and like royalty, nobody fussed with him, the famous author, about the quantity.

  That lovable doubter of scientific verities, Charles Fort, died on May 3, 1932. He collected oddities which seemed to cast doubt on popular science. His was a discriminating intellect which his followers seem to lack. In the following excerpt from his Book of the Damned , his reasons for rejecting a coin proposed to be ancient in origin, are mentioned: "...with due disregard, you can find signs of your great grandmother, or of the Crusades, or of the Mayans, upon anything that ever came from Chillicothe or from a five and ten cent store. Anything that looks like a cat and a gold fish looks like Leo and Pisces: but, by due suppressions and distortions there's nothing that can't be made to look like a cat and a gold fish. I fear me we're turning a little irritable here. To be damned by slumbering giants and interesting little harlots and clowns who rank high in their profession is at least supportable to our vanity; but, we find that the anthropologists are of the slum...

Leonardo DaVinci died on May 2, 1519, in the home given him by the king of France. They were close friends, and one of the gifts DaVinci gave the king, was a metallic lion, which could be opened to show a lily. This referred to the fleur-de-lis which symbolized the French royal house.

Terry Southern, who wrote the screenplay for Dr. Strangelove, was born on May 1, 1924. He is among that elite group of folks featured on the Sgt. Peppers album cover: Terry Southern is the one behind those 'cool-cat' shades.