I probably don't need to tell you this, but I'm crazy about cats.
When I was little, friends used to bring home kittens and cry when their parents wouldn't let them in the house. My sisters and I never had this problem: our parents brought home kittens all the time. My earliest memories are of cats. Sleeping cats, purring cats, long-suffering cats allowing their ears to be inverted and their whiskers gently pulled, angry, spitting, cats, elderly cats, playful, big-eyed young kittens, sick cats huddled over their water dishes, venerable old toms with quirky personalities, pregnant and nursing cats. When you've got parents who bring home cats and encourage you to do the same, you end up with lots.
Listening to other cat lovers talk about the cat they grew up with, I feel embarrassed: we never had a cat, we had dozens upon dozens. Word got around that we were soft on cats and in the dead of night, cat rejects would be dumped on our doorstep. Tiny kittens with their eyes still sealed shut, sick cats huddled in cardboard boxes, cats with personality problems. Most of them had lusty appetites and gave birth to many kittens. We grew infamous. The people at the county health department knew all about us.
We had marmalade cats, tortoiseshells, white cats, black cats, white-and-black cats who looked like they were wearing tuxedos, tabby cats, Siamese cats, Persian cats, and every conceivable mixture. Some of our cats were feral and anti-social; some were disabled. All of them were dearly loved. And a lot of our babysitting money went to the local vets.
After I left home, one of the questions I asked new friends was Do you like cats? If I introduced anyone to my family, the question was guaranteed to come up. Democrat or Republican, believer or atheist, vegetarian or meat-eater, education, hobbies, family -- all of that could wait. Our shibboleth was simple: Do you like cats? A no resulted in dire consequences. People who gave equivocal answers were viewed as potential converts and subtly tested for cat-loving potential.
I like to think that I've moved on from my family's cat mania. If you prefer dogs, I will be perfectly nice about it. And for what it's worth, I've loved dogs myself and even had a few. But old habits die hard. I can't help it: when I meet people, I still want to know. Do you love cats? Are you one of us?
Once, while conducting a speaking proficiency exam, the colleague I was working with asked the boy we were testing Do you have a pet? This boy had misunderstood some basic questions and was obviously very nervous. He frowned and hunched forward. "Pet?" My colleague smiled. "Like a dog or cat." The boy's face cleared. "Yes," he answered. My eyes opened wide. "Dog or cat?" I almost whispered. The boy licked his lips and smiled. "Cat. I love cat." It was all I could do not to give him a higher grade than he deserved.
Yesterday, a friend sent me 17 Things Worth Knowing About Your Cat. (As you can probably imagine, people send me things like this all the time.) Now, I'm well up on my cat facts; I already knew Hitler was a dog-lover who hated cats and that Lincoln and Robert E Lee were both cat lovers. (For you dog-lovers out there who suspect I'm being catty, I don't think that Hitler loving dogs is a mark against you, I think it's the only good thing I've ever heard about Hitler.) But I didn't realize how passionately Eisenhower hated cats, and I got to thinking about other cat lovers and haters and so I checked out a few more websites.
At first, there were no surprises. Famous cat lovers include Petrarch, Sir Winston Churchill, Albert Schweitzer, Renoir, Monet, Florence Nightingale, The Prophet Mohammed, Anne Frank, Raymond Chandler, Kuniyoshi Utagawa, Dickens, Dr Samuel Johnson, Edgar Allan Poe, The Bronte Sisters, Mark Twain, and Edward Lear -- to name only a few. No doubt about it: we cat people have got some great guys on our side. Other famous cat-haters besides Eisenhower and Hitler are: Genghis Kahn, Alexander the Great, Benito Mussolini, Julius Casear, and Napolean Bonaparte. So far so good, right? Who needs those guys? But then I kept reading and I found some real surprises. Lenin, for instance. Who'd have figured him for a cat lover? (Thank God it wasn't Stalin!) Also, Marie Antoinette, Teddy Roosevelt, and Queen Victoria, cat lovers all. And finally -- (nooooo!) William Shakespeare was a cat hater while Ernest Hemingway was a cat lover. I should point out that I love Shakespeare, but am not particularly fond of Hemingway.
I am absolutely broken-hearted about Shakespeare, but who knows? Perhaps he had an early bad cat experience. Perhaps in time, someone could have gently showed him the error of his ways. And I had no idea that Hemingway was one of us! How could I have missed that? He had 30. Thirty!
I won't give up on Shakespeare, but I am absolutely going to go back and reread Hemingway. I'm bound to have missed something there.
