The Philosopher's Cat

  Google is changing details and I am not sure how to accommodate them.  To ensure you see my posts, I will leave my address here for you, for the next short while: marsha.brown@alumni.emory.edu

  Nancy Mitford died on June 30, 1973. One of the formidable Mitford sisters, she kept cats; here she says in a letter to Lady Redesdale: "Old animals are so much nicer. I love my cat now, but it took about 8 years."   Odd sentiment really. This was in 1959, and we don't know if this was Minet she was talking about, a cat Diana had brought her.

Katherine Hepburn died on June 29, 2003. One of her most famous films, "Bringing up Baby," features her as a society figure who has a tame wild cat. I really need to find the New Yorker article from decades ago that profiled this trend of making jungle animals into pets. 

June 28, 1712 is the birthdate of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Judging from his "Confessions" he had a cat. Quoting: "How eagerly I ran every morning at sunrise to breathe the perfumed air of the peristyle. What delicious cafe au lait I took there with my Therese. My cat and dog kept us company This retinue alone would have been enough for my whole life I should never have experienced a moment's weariness I was in an earthly paradise I lived there in the same state of innocence and enjoyed the same happiness." Rousseau is interesting, he inaugurated a new confessional personal style of literature. The Queen of France read his books, though others would later blame Rousseau for the revolution. We think of him as modern, but few recall that he dropped the children of his mistresses off at an orphanage. Still, how very French the above quote sounds.

  Wanda Gag died on June 27, 1946. She translated the Grimm brothers fairy tales, and wrote herself children's stories, such as "Millions of Cats" which was a ground-breaking work in 1928. Gag's book which she illustrated also, was the first picture book which did not have a picture on one page, and the text on the facing page. Gag used the entire two page spread for one large illustration, which carried the story.

Madagascar declared its independence from France on June 26, 1960. Madagascar is still the home of mysterious animals, as it was in the late 19th century, when a lemur was entered as a cat in one of the first cat shows in Europe. It was only after the show finished that anyone perceived  that one of the cats was in fact, a lemur.

John Ciardi's commonplace book is does not have a lot of cat quotes. We know though this poet, born on June 24, 1916, was a cat fan because of his poem "My Cat, Mrs. Lick-A-Chin"  The descriptive details here reveal a close observer of cat behavior---the poem describes how his cat "can't ever make up her mind whether she wants to go out or come in!"