Twain and Poe on Cats

Welcome to Celebrate Poe - My name is George Bartley, and this is episode 239.

This episode deals with arguably the two greatest writers of the 19th century - Mark Twain and Edgar Poe - and their fascination with (and love of) cats in their lives and literature. 

Transcript

Welcome to Celebrate Poe - Episode 239 - Twain and Poe on Cats. After briefly looking at the role of animals in the life of Lord Byron, I’d like to look at some quotes about  cats by Mark Twain and Edgar Allan Poe.

First Mark Twain - Mark Twain adored his cat, Bambino. When Bambino got lost one day, Twain took out an ad in the New York American, offering $5 for his safe return with the description: "Large and intensely black; thick, velvety fur; has a faint fringe of white hair across his chest; not easy to find in ordinary light." Luckily, Bambino turned up in a neighbor's yard and was brought home, but for days afterwards Mark Twain fans kept showing up with strange cats, claiming they'd found him.

In addition to his classic novels, Mark Twain is noted for his many comments about cats - among them -  
When a man loves cats, I am his friend and comrade, without further introduction.
- "An Incident," Who Is Mark Twain?

A man’s treatment of a dog is no indication of the man’s nature, but his treatment of a cat is. It is the crucial test. None but the humane treat a cat well.
- "Winter-end Excursion to the Sutherd" (1902)

A home without a cat -- and a well-fed, well-petted and properly revered cat -- may be a perfect home, perhaps, but how can it prove title?
- Pudd'nhead Wilson

Some people scorn a cat and think it not an essential; but the Clemens tribe are not of these.
- quoted in "UC's Bancroft Library celebrating Mark Twain," San Francisco Chronicle, Oct. 2, 2008

You may say a cat uses good grammar. Well, a cat does -- but you let a cat get excited once; you let a cat get to pulling fur with another cat on a shed, nights, and you'll hear grammar that will give you the lockjaw. Ignorant people think it's the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain't so; it's the sickening grammar they use.
- A Tramp Abroad

Of all God's creatures there is only one that cannot be made the slave of the lash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat.
- Notebook, 1894

I simply can't resist a cat, particularly a purring one. They are the cleanest, cunningest, and most intelligent things I know, outside of the girl you love, of course.
- quoted in Abroad with Mark Twain and Eugene Field, Henry W. Fisher (1922)

Perfect independence of character is found in not one of God's creatures except the cat. One man in ten millions creates it in himself, and it makes him as conspicuous as the Milky Way; but no cat is born without it.
⁃ unused aphorism for "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar," (published in Pudd'nhead Wilson, 2024 Works edition)

One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.
- "Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar"

One of them likes to be crammed into a corner-pocket of the billiard table -- which he fits as snugly as does a finger in a glove and then he watches the game (and obstructs it) by the hour, and spoils many a shot by putting out his paw and changing the direction of a passing ball.
⁃ Letter to Mable Larkin Patterson, 2 October 1908

I urged that kings were dangerous. He said, then have cats. He was sure that a royal family of cats would answer every purpose. They would be as useful as any other royal family, they would know as much, they would have the same virtues and the same treacheries, the same disposition to get up shindies with other royal cats, they would be laughably vain and absurd and never know it, they would be wholly inexpensive, finally, they would have as sound a divine right as any other royal house. ... The worship of royalty being founded in unreason, these graceful and harmless cats would easily become as sacred as any other royalties, and indeed more so, because it would presently be noticed that they hanged nobody, beheaded nobody, imprisoned nobody, inflicted no cruelties or injustices of any sort, and so must be worthy of a deeper love and reverence than the customary human king, and would certainly get it.
⁃ A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

I had a great admiration for Sour Mash, and a great affection for her, too. She was one of the institutions of Quarry Farm for a good many years. She had an abundance of that noble quality which all cats possess, and which neither man nor any other animal possesses in any considerable degree -- independence. Also she was affectionate, she was loyal, she was plucky, she was enterprising, she was just to her friends and unjust to her enemies -- and she was righteously entitled to the high compliment which so often fell from the lips of John T. Lewis -- reluctantly, and as by compulsion, but all the more precious for that:

"Other Christians is always worrying about other people's opinions, but Sour Mash don't give a damn.”

Indeed she was just that independent of criticism, and I think it was her supreme grace. In her industries she was remarkable. She was always busy. If she wasn't exterminating grasshoppers she was exterminating snakes -- for no snake had any terrors for her. When she wasn't catching mice she was catching birds. She was untiring in her energies. Every waking moment was precious to her; in it she would find something useful to do -- and if she ran out of material and couldn't find anything else to do she would have kittens. She always kept us supplied, and her families were of choice quality. She herself was a three-colored tortoise-shell, but she had no prejudices of breed, creed, or caste. She furnished us all kinds, all colors, with that impartiality which was so fine a part of her make. She allowed no dogs on the premises except those that belonged there. Visitors who brought their dogs along always had an opportunity to regret it. She hadn't two plans for receiving a dog guest, but only one. She didn't wait for the formality of an introduction to any dog, but promptly jumped on his back and rode him all over the farm. By my help she would send out cards, next day, and invite that dog to a garden party, but she never got an acceptance. The dog that had enjoyed her hospitalities once was willing to stand pat.
- Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 2 (2013), p. 216. Dictated 3 September 1906.

The cat sat down. Still looking at us in that disconcerting way, she tilted her head first to one side and then the other, inquiringly and cogitatively, the way a cat does when she has struck the unexpected and can't quite make out what she had better do about it. Next she washed one side of her face, making such an awkward and unscientific job of it that almost anybody would have seen that she was either out of practice or didn't know how. She stopped with the one side, and looked bored, and as if she had only been doing it to put in the time, and wished she could think of something else to do to put in some more time. She sat a while, blinking drowsily, then she hit an idea, and looked as if she wondered she hadn't thought of it earlier. She got up and went visiting around among the furniture and belongings, sniffing at each and every article, and elaborately examining it. If it was a chair, she examined it all around, then jumped up in it and sniffed all over its seat and its back; if it was any other thing she could examine all around, she examined it all around; if it was a chest and there was room for her between it and the wall, she crowded herself in behind there and gave it a thorough overhauling; if it was a tall thing, like a washstand, she would stand on her hind toes and stretch up as high as she could, and reach across and paw at the toilet things and try to rake them to where she could smell them; if it was the cupboard, she stood on her toes and reached up and pawed the knob; if it was the table she would squat, and measure the distance, and make a leap, and land in the wrong place, owing to newness to the business; and, part of her going too far and sliding over the edge, she would scramble, and claw at things desperately, and save herself and make good; then she would smell everything on the table, and archly and daintily paw everything around that was movable, and finally paw something off, and skip cheerfully down and paw it some more, throwing herself into the prettiest attitudes, rising on her hind feet and curving her front paws and flirting her head this way and that and glancing down cunningly at the object, then pouncing on it and spatting it half the length of the room, and chasing it up and spatting it again, and again, and racing

independence there is, in Heaven or anywhere else, there ain't any left over for anybody else. He's your friend, if you like, but that's the limit -- equal terms, too, be you king or be you cobbler; you can't play any I'm-better-than-you on a cat -- no, sir! Yes, he's your friend, if you like, but you got to treat him like a gentleman, there ain't any other terms. The minute you don't, he pulls freight.
- "The Refuge of the Derelicts"
_____

Kitten in hand

"That cat will write her autograph all over your leg if you let her."
⁃ from memoirs of Clemens's secretary Mary Howden published in New York Herald, December 13, 1925

Now Edgar Allan Poe also owned - or should I say WAS owned by what has been described as a a beautiful tortoiseshell cat named Cattarina. Historians believe Cattarina became a part of the Poe family (Edgar, his wife Virginia, and her mother Maria Clemm) in late 1839/early 1840 while they were living on Coates Street in Philadelphia. Nicknames were popular in their home - Edgar was simply Eddie, he called his wife Sissy, and his mother-in-law was referred to as Muddy. Cattarina herself was sometimes called Catters or Kate, and her name has been spelled both with one T or two.
Edgar and Cattarina formed a very close bond. She reportedly preferred to eat from his hand, was depressed when he traveled, and enjoyed perching on his shoulder while he wrote, "purring as if in complacent approval of the work 

During the winter of 1846, when Poe was destitute and Virginia was dying from tuberculosis, Cattarina would curl up on the bed with her to provide much needed comfort. One visitor to their home during this time described how Virginia had no source of warmth other than her husband's army coat and the cat. He wrote: "The wonderful cat seemed conscious of her great usefulness." Virginia passed away in January 1847 at only 24 years old.

Poe died at the age of 40 on October 7, 1849. Cattarina joined him in death within weeks, discovered by Muddy upon returning to the family cottage at Fordham for a last load of boxes. Her death is every bit as mysterious as that of her owner. Poe's cause of death continues to be debated to this day, with one theory being that he died of rabies. Since Cattarina passed so shortly after, some wonder if he could he have contracted it from her. It's worth noting that there was no available vaccine for pets at the time.

You might say that Cattarina's legacy lives on, because in November 2012 a trio of kittens were found on the grounds of the Poe Museum in Richmond, Virginia. Museum staff named them Edgar, Pluto (after the cat in The Black Cat), and Cattarina. Cattarina was adopted by a museum staffer, but Edgar and Pluto have become official mascots of the Poe Museum and can be visited there today.

I’d like to conclude this episode with a lesser known work that Edgar Poe wrote for Alexander's Weekly Messenger, vol. 4, no. 5 and published on January 29, 1840.
 
Now I will have a future episode or two about Poe's work at Alexander's Weekly - but until then I wanted to mention an epigram that I guess is supposed to be funny that a Poe wrote for the publication.

First a bit of explanation - the name Mary in the 19th century was often used for Polly.  And if you have to start explaining a joke before you begin, then you are already in trouble.

Here's the supposed witty remark by Poe - 

Poor Mary's dead! why is she a many-sided figure?
Because she's a Polly gone. — polygon.

I guess you really have to be into Poe to be familiar with this work by Poe called Instinct vs Reason — a Black Cat.

GHOST SOUND

Well, Mr. Poe - how convenient!  Would you favor us with reading your essay Instinct vs Reason - a Black Cat.

Certainly, Mr. Bartley

The line which demarcates the instinct of the brute creation from the boasted reason of man, is, beyond doubt, of the most shadowy and unsatisfactory character — a boundary line far more difficult to settle than even the North-Eastern or the Oregon. The question whether the lower animals do or do not reason, will possibly never be decided — certainly never in our present condition of knowledge. While the self-love and arrogance of man will persist in denying the reflective power to beasts, because the granting it seems to derogate from his own vaunted supremacy, he yet perpetually finds himself involved in the paradox of decrying instinct as an inferior faculty, while he is forced to admit its infinite superiority, in a thousand cases, over the very reason which he claims exclusively as his own. Instinct, so far from being an inferior reason, is perhaps the most exacted intellect of all. It will appear to the true philosopher as the divine mind itself acting immediately upon its creatures.

The habits of the lion-ant, of many kinds of spiders, and of the beaver, have in them a wonderful analogy, or rather similarity, to the usual operations of the reason of man — but the instinct of some other creatures has no such analogy — and is referable only to the spirit of the Deity itself, acting directly, and through no corporal organ, upon the volition of the animal. Of this lofty species of instinct the coral-worm affords a remarkable instance. This little creature, the architect of continents, is not only capable of building ramparts against the sea, with a precision of purpose, and scientific adaptation and arrangement, from which the most skillful engineer might imbibe his best knowledge — but is gifted of prophecy. It will foresee, for months in advance, the pure accidents which are to happen to its dwelling, and aided by myriads of its brethren, all acting as if with one mind (and indeed acting with only one — with the mind of the Creator) will work diligently to counteract influences which exist alone in the future. There is also an immensely wonderful consideration connected with the cell of the bee. Let a mathematician be required to solve the problem of the shape best calculated in such a cell as the bee wants, for the two requisites of strength and space — and he will find himself involved in the very highest and most abstruse questions of analytical research. Yet since bees were, they have been continually solving the problem. The leading distinction between instinct and reason seems to be, that, while the one is infinitely the more exact, the more certain, and the more far-seeing in its sphere of action — the sphere of action in the other is of the far wider extent. But we are preaching a homily, when we merely intended to tell a short story about a cat.

The writer of this article is the owner of one of the most remarkable black cats in the world — and this saying much; for it will be remembered that black cats are all of them witches. The one in question has not a white hair about her, and is of a demure and sanctified demeanor. That portion of the kitchen which she most frequents is accessible only by a door, which closes with what is termed a thumb-latch; these latches are rude in construction, and some force and dexterity are always requisite to force them down. But puss is in the daily habit of opening the door, which she accomplished in the following way. She first springs from the ground to the guard of the latch (which resembles the guard over a gun-trigger,) and through this she thrusts her left arm to hold on with. She now, with her right hand, presses the thumb-latch until it yields, and here several attempts are frequently requisite. Having forced it down, however, she seems to be aware that her task is but half accomplished, since, if the door is not pushed open before she lets go, the latch will again fall into its socket. She, therefore, screws her body round so as to bring her hind feet immediately beneath the latch, while she leaps with all her strength from the door — the impetus of the sprin?g forcing it open, and her hind feet sustaining the latch until this impetus is fairly given.

Farewell, Mr. Bartley - I must admit that I in a rather hurried state and must therefore take my leave.

Goodbye, Mr. Poe.

As some of you may know, Poe was also to write the words, “The boundaries between life and death are at best shadowy and vague.
Who knows where one ends and the other begins.”   By writing about the boundary between reason and instinct, was Poe also commenting in some way about the boundaries between life and death.

Join us for the next episode 240 of Celebrate Poe - for Animal Metaphors - an episode topic that is a lot more interesting than it might sound at first.
Sources include  perplexity.ai, Edgar Allan Poe, Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography by Arthur Hobson Quinn, The Poe Log: A Documentary Life of Edgar Allan Poe by Dwight Thomas and David K. Jackson, and The Reason for the Darkness of the Night by John Tresch.

Thank you for listening to Celebrate Poe.