Letters of Note: Cats

by Shaun Usher

  So many sad and somber thoughts, which I should not even try to express. For exactly three years, since I flew to Cleveland in December and first understood my own situation, I have worried about my little family. I knew no one could take care of Jeffie, and I felt it unlikely that whoever takes Roger would want to adopt a cat, too, so even Moppet was a problem. Last September when she died I felt that the inevitable dissolution of my little circle had begun. Now I have lived to witness another step. But oh, I should be glad for Jeffie, and soon I know I can be, for it would have been awful for him, and so frightening, if he had survived me. Now that problem exists no more.

  Darling, I suppose I oughtn’t to send you such thoughts, but it seems I have to express them.

  Now this means Roger and I can come to you, leaving, and returning to, such a strangely empty house. I’ll discuss with you the best time. Now that it makes no difference here, I am wondering whether morning or evening is the easiest time for you to meet the train, in terms of weather. Of course we won’t go at a time we know the weather will be bad.

  I have to go down for a treatment this afternoon. It’s cold and windy, but bright, and I guess most of the snow is off the roads. I’ll be talking to you tonight if you’re home, dear. Meanwhile, all my love.

  Rachel

  LETTER 03

  THE CAT RANCH

  Jack Lemmon to Walter Matthau

  23 December 1988

  Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau shared the screen many times during their Hollywood careers, most notably in The Odd Couple in 1968 and, twenty-five years later, in Grumpy Old Men, both comedies that benefited enormously from an on-screen chemistry rarely witnessed. Off-screen, perhaps unsurprisingly, they were the best of friends, and shared a mischievous sense of humour that spilled over into their correspondence. Over the course of their relationship they sent each other countless witty letters in an effort to raise a laugh. In December of 1988, as Christmas approached, Lemmon put pen to paper and revived an old gag that was first spotted in an Illinois newspaper in 1875.

  THE LETTER

  December 23rd, 1988

  Mr. Walter Matthau

  278 Toyopa

  Pacific Palisades

  California 90272

  Dear Waltz:

  I know you’re always interested in looking for opportunities for investment.

  I don’t know if you would be interested in this, but I thought I would mention it to you because it could be a real “sleeper” in making a lot of money with very little investment.

  A group of us are considering investing in a large cat ranch near Hermosillo, Mexico. It is our purpose to start rather small, with about one million cats. Each cat averages about twelve kittens a year: skins can be sold for about 20¢ for the white ones and up to 40¢ for the black. This will give us 12 million cat skins per year to sell at an average price of around 32¢, making our revenues about $3 million a year. This really averages out to £10 thousand a day – excluding Sundays and holidays.

  A good Mexican cat man can skin about 50 cats per day at a wage of $3.15 a day. It will only take 663 men to operate the ranch so the net profit would be over $8,200 per day.

  Now, the cats would be fed on rats exclusively. Rats multiply four times as fast as cats. We would start a ranch adjacent to our cat farm. If we start with a million rats, we will have four rats per cat each day. The rats will be fed on the carcasses of the cats that we skin. This will give each rat a quarter of a cat. You can see by this that this business is a clean operation – self-supporting and really automatic throughout. The cats will eat the rats and the rats will eat the cats and we will get the skins.

  Let me know if you are interested. As you can imagine, I am rather particular who I want to get into this, and want the fewest investors possible.

  Eventually, it is my hope to cross the cats with snakes, for they will skin themselves twice a year. This would save labor costs of skinning as well as give me two skins for one cat.

  I really felt that giving you an opportunity like this would be the greatest Christmas present possible.

  Love,

  Jack

  ‘IT IS OUR PURPOSE TO START RATHER SMALL, WITH ABOUT ONE MILLION CATS.’

  – Jack Lemmon

  LETTER 04

  MY FLUTTERING HEART

  Persian Snow (Erasmus Darwin) and Miss Po Felina (Anna Seward)

  September 1780

  When first published in 1804, poet Anna Seward’s Memoirs of the Life of Dr. Darwin – a biography of English physician and philosopher Erasmus Darwin, who had died in 1802 and was grandfather to Charles Darwin – raised more than a few eyebrows, and indeed anger from his family, due to the unexpected inclusion of this curious exchange of correspondence: in 1780 it seems Darwin had sent to Seward, whom he had known for many years, a playful and quite suggestive love letter that was addressed to her cat, Miss Po Felina, written in the voice of his cat, Persian Snow. Naturally, her cat responded, and in the memoir both sides of the exchange were reproduced. If nothing else, the letters revealed a fascinating, otherwise unseen side to Darwin, and at the time served to generate much debate about the relationship between biographer and subject. The cats themselves escaped with their reputations unscathed.

  THE LETTERS

  Lichfield Vicarage, Sept. 7th. 1780.

  Dear Miss Pussey,

  As I sat, the other day, basking myself in the Dean’s Walk, I saw you, in your stately palace, washing your beautiful round face, and elegantly brinded ears, with your velvet paws, and whisking about, with graceful sinuosity, your meandering tail. That treacherous hedgehog, Cupid, concealed himself behind your tabby beauties, and darting one of his too well aimed quills, pierced, O cruel imp! my fluttering heart.

  Ever since that fatal hour have I watched, day and night, in my balcony, hoping that the stillness of the starlight evenings might induce you to take the air on the leads of the palace. Many serenades have I sung under you windows; and, when you failed to appear, with the sound of my voice made the vicarage re-echo through all its winding lanes and dirty alleys. All heard me but my cruel Fair-one; she, wrapped in fur, sat purring with contented insensibility, or slept with untroubled dreams.

  Though I cannot boast those delicate varieties of melody with which you sometimes ravish the ear of night, and stay the listening stars; though you sleep hourly on the lap of the favourite of the muses, and are patted by those fingers which hold the pen of science; and every day, with her permission, dip your white whiskers in delicious cream; yet am I not destitute of all advantages of birth, education, and beauty. Derived from Persian kings, my snowy fur yet retains the whiteness and splendour of their ermine.

  This morning, as I sat up on the Doctor’s tea-table, and saw my reflected features in the slop-basin, my long white whiskers, ivory teeth, and topaz eyes, I felt an agreeable presentiment of my suit; and certainly the slop-basin did not flatter me, which shews the azure flowers upon its borders less beauteous than they are.

  You know not, dear Miss Pussey Po, the value of the address you neglect. New milk have I, in flowing abundance, and mice pent up in twenty garrets, for your food and amusement.

  Permit me, this afternoon, to lay at your divine feet the head of an enormous Norway rat, which has even now stained my paws with its gore. If you will do me the honour to sing the following song, which I have taken the liberty to write, as expressing the sentiments I wish you to entertain, I will bring a band of catgut and catcall, to accompany you in chorus.

  Air: – spirituosi.

  Cats I scorn, who, sleek and fat,

  Shiver at a Norway rat;

  Rough and hardy, bold and free,

  Be the cat that’s made for me!

  He, whose nervous paw can take

  My lady’s lapdog by the neck;

  With furious hiss attack the hen,

  And snatch the chicken from the pen.

  If the treacherous swain should prove

  Rebellious to my tender love,

&n
bsp; My scorn the vengeful paw shall dart,

  Shall tear his fur, and pierce his heart.

  Chorus:

  Qu-ow wow, quall, wawl, moon.

  Deign, most adorable charmer, to purr your assent to this my request, and believe me to be with the profoundest respect, your true admirer,

  Snow

  Miss Seward’s answer:

  Palace, Lichfield.

  Sept. 8th. 1780.

  I am but too sensible of the charms of Mr. Snow; but while I admire the spotless whiteness of his ermine, and the tyger-strength of his commanding form, I sigh in secret, that he, who sucked the milk of benevolence and philosophy, should yet retain the extreme of the fierceness, too justly imputed to the Grimalkin race. Our hereditary violence is perhaps commendable when we exert it against the foes of our protectors, but deserves much blame when it annoys their friends.

  The happiness of a refined education was mine; yet, dear Mr. Snow, my advantages in that respect were not equal to what yours might have been; but, while you give unbounded indulgence to your carnivorous desires, I have so far subdued mine, that the lark pours his mattin song, the canary bird warbles wild and loud, and the robin pipes his farewell song to the setting sun, unmolested in my presence; nay, the plump and tempting dove has reposed securely on my soft back, and bent her glossy neck in graceful curves as she walked round me.

  But let me hasten to tell thee how my sensibilities in thy favour were, last month, unfortunately repressed. Once, in the noon of one of its most beautiful nights, I was invited abroad by the serenity of the amorous hour, secretly stimulated by the hope of meeting my admired Persian. With silent steps I paced around the dimly gleaming leads of the palace. I had acquired a taste for scenic beauty and poetic imagery, by listening to ingenious observations upon their nature from the lips of thy own lord, as I lay purring at the feet of my mistress.

  I admired the lovely scene, and breathed my sighs for thee to the listening moon. She threw the long shadows of the majestic cathedral upon the silvered lawn. I beheld the pearly meadows of Stow Valley, and the lake in its bosom, which, reflecting the lunar rays, seemed a sheet of diamonds. The trees of the Dean’s Walk, which the hand of Dulness had been restrained from torturing into trim and detestable regularity, met each other in a thousand various and beautiful forms. Their liberated boughs danced on the midnight gale, and the edges of their leaves were whitened by the moonbeams. I descended to the lawn, that I might throw the beauties of the valley into perspective through the graceful arches, formed by their meeting branches. Suddenly my ear was startled, not by the voice of my lover, but by the loud and dissonant noise of the war-song, which six black grimalkins were raising in honour of the numerous victories obtained by the Persian, Snow; compared with which, they acknowledged those of English cats had little brilliance, eclipsed, like the unimportant victories of the Howes, by the puissant Clinton and Arbuthnot, and the still more puissant Cornwallis. It sung that thou didst owe thy matchless might to thy lineal descent from the invincible Alexander, as he derived his more than mortal valour from his mother Olympia’s illicit commerce with Jupiter. They sang that, amid the renowned siege of Persepolis, while Roxana and Statira were contending for the honour of his attentions, the conqueror of the world deigned to bestow them upon a large, white female cat, thy grandmother, warlike Mr. Snow, in the ten thousandth and ninety-ninth ascent.

  Thus far their triumphant din was music to my ear; and even when it sung that lakes of milk ran curdling into whey, within the ebon concave of their pancheons, with terror at thine approach; that mice squealed from all the neighbouring garrets; and that whole armies of Norway rats, crying out amain, “the devil take the hindmost”, ran violently into the minster-pool, at the first gleam of thy white mail through the shrubs of Mr. Howard’s garden.

  But O! when they sang, or rather yelled, of larks warbling on sunbeams, fascinated suddenly by the glare of thine eyes, and falling into thy remorseless talons; of robins, warbling soft and solitary upon the leafless branch, till the pale cheek of winter dimpled into joy; of hundreds of those bright breasted songsters, torn from their barren sprays by thy pitiless fangs! – Alas! my heart died within me at the idea of so preposterous a union!

  Marry you, Mr. Snow, I’m afraid I cannot; since, though the laws of our community might not oppose our connection, yet those of principle, of delicacy, of duty to my mistress, do very powerfully oppose it.

  As to presiding at your concert, if you extremely wish it, I may perhaps grant your request; but then you must allow me to sing a song of my own composition, applicable to our present situation, and set to music by my sister Sophy at Mr. Brown’s the organist’s, thus,

  Air: – affettuoso.

  He, whom Pussy Po detains

  A captive in her silken chains,

  Must curb the furious thirst of prey,

  Nor rend the warbler from his spray!

  Nor let his wild, ungenerous rage

  An unprotected foe engage.

  O, should cat of Darwin prove

  Foe to pity, foe to love!

  Cat, that listens day by day,

  To mercy’s mild and honied lay,

  Too surely would the dire disgrace

  More deeply brand our future race,

  The stigma fix, where’er they range,

  That cats can ne’er their nature change.

  Should I content with thee to wed,

  These sanguine crimes upon thy head,

  And ere the wish’d reform I see,

  Adieu to lapping Seward’s tea!

  Adieu to purring gentle praise

  Charm’d as she quotes thy master’s lays!

  Could I, alas! our kittens bring

  Where sweet her plumy favorites sing,

  Would not the watchful nymph espy

  Their father’s fierceness in their eye.

  And drive us far and wide away,

  In cold and lonely barn to stray?

  Where the dark owl, with hideous scream,

  Shall mock our yells for forfeit cream,

  As on starv’d mice we swearing dine

  And grumble that our lives are nine.

  Chorus: – largo.

  Waal, woee, trone, moan, mall, oll, moule.

  The still too much admired Mr. Snow will have the goodness to pardon the freedom of these expostulations and excuse their imperfections. The morning, O Snow! had been devoted to this my correspondence with thee, but I was interrupted in that employment by the visit of two females of our species, who fed my ill-starred passion by praising thy wit and endowments, exemplified by thy elegant letter, to which the delicacy of my sentiments obliges me to send so inauspicious a reply.

  I am, dear Mr. Snow,

  Your ever obliged

  Po Felina

  LETTER 05

  A HUMAN CARESS FROM A CAT

  Sylvia Townsend Warner and David Garnett

  June 1973

  Sylvia Townsend Warner first met David Garnett in 1922, in the London bookshop in which he worked – she was twenty-nine, he was a year older. They had much in common, particularly in the literary sense, and clicked instantly, their ensuing friendship lasting until Warner passed away fifty-six years later, by which point they had both become celebrated novelists. They wrote to each other hundreds of times over the years, on all manner of subjects, their gentle letters glowing with a mutual affection. In June of 1973 they exchanged letters on the subject of cats.

  THE LETTERS

  Dearest Sylvia,

  Can you explain how and why cats make love to us? Tiber will come, if I am reading or writing or lying on my bed and will “tease tow” with his claws. Then coming closer, will gaze into my face, suddenly dig his pointed muzzle under my chin once or twice, retreat, roll on his side, inviting my hand, turn his head dreamily to one side, passive and luxurious. Then he will turn on me almost fiercely with a burst of purring, and so on, and so on.

  But is this, as I think, reserved for human lovers? With a fema
le cat I think he displays no such graces but is fiercely practical. It is more like the love that was shown him by his mother when he was a kitten. And naturally it is shown most strongly before and after I have fed him. But the luxury of his furry love is very beautiful.

  He fights continually with the Wood Cat–a savage beast that has run wild and supports himself in the wood by hunting, flying from man. He is more versed in battle, and Tiber is continually appearing with his scalp furrowed by the Wood Cat’s claws, paws bitten through and lame, ears bleeding. He has just recovered after some days of lameness when his paw was swollen like a boxing-glove. I keep him shut up at night to save further fights, but now he can put his paw to the ground he will go off to fight again.

  We had a terrible storm yesterday evening, with all the artillery of Heaven and hailstones like large lumps of sugar bouncing all over the carpet from the chimney, and today the leaves are torn and many barley fields laid flat and peasants half ruined. Every room was flooded–except the bathroom.

  Very much love from

  David

  * * *

  Dearest David,

  Tiber makes love to you for the good reason that he loves you, and loves making love. Cats are passionate and voluptuous, they get satisfaction from mating but no pleasure (the females dislike it, and this is wounding to the male), no voluptuousness; and no appreciation. Tiber has the pleasure of being pleased and knowing he pleases in his love-making with you. I am so glad you have each other. Does he roll on his head? Does he fall asleep with an ownerly paw laid over you?

  We had a dark grey cat (Norfolk bred, very Norfolk in character) called Tom. He was reserved, domineering, voluptuous–much as I imagine Tiber to be. When he was middle-aged he gave up nocturnal prowlings and slept on my bed, against my feet. One evening I was reading in bed when I became aware that Tom was staring at me. I put down my book, said nothing, watched. Slowly, with a look of intense concentration, he got up and advanced on me, like Tarquin with ravishing strides, poised himself, put out a front paw, and stroked my cheek as I used to stroke his chops. A human caress from a cat. I felt very meagre and ill-educated that I could not purr.