Since this week I’m doing CATS  thought I’d look at them in Fiction:

When I think of Books with Cat in the title…Dr. Seuss is the first that comes to mind.  It’s a rainy day and Dick and Sally can’t find anything to do . . . until the Cat in the Hat unexpectedly appears and turns their dreary afternoon into a fun-filled extravaganza!  This beginner’s reading adventure is fun for one and all—even people like me who aren’t exactly readers anymore:     “you find magic wherever you look. sit back and relax. all you need is a book”
― Dr. Seuss, The Cat in the Hat:  and while it’s not really telling us much about cats or even our mind set about them it is a good start to getting the younger humans reading and that my dear is a good thing.

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In the book and the movie the cat which Holly abandons in the rain  in the book is never found and she is left to wonder whether she’s doomed to never know what belonged to her until after it is gone: an epiphany that is only met with compassion from our nameless narrator.  The movie has a much kinder ending (not at all typical to Capote) where cat and lover both show up to comfort our heroine at the end. http://www.popmatters.com/post/154748-breakfast-at-tiffanys-page-v.-screen/ So a cat as object lesson no less….interestingly the cat’s independence is a part of this as when she leaves it she does not claim it–this probably wouldn’t work as well with a dog, who is a much more committed companion and to which ownership would appear to be much more concrete.

Holly Golightly: I’m like cat here, a no-name slob. We belong to nobody, and nobody belongs to us. We don’t even belong to each other.

And who could forget the Cheshire Cat in the Bizarre World of Alice in Wonderland—Disney did it well but Depp did it better—one sometimes wonders on that man’s sanity or at the very least his grip on reality given the bizarre beings he is capable of becoming with what appears complete abandonment–The cat here if you look carefully isn’t that far from the animal we all know—with is appearances and disappearances (who hasn’t looked up to see a cat, lost sight for a manner of seconds and found it gone permanently–then to have it return many feet from the original sighting and setting as it has been there for days or years in fact)  The limberness of its body–I have often thought to have my cats x-rayed to be sure that they actually have solid bones given the contortion they are able to achieve without any normal restrictions that one finds in our own calcium hardened structure.  And of course the eyes that stare through you etc, etc, etc.

“Oh, you can’t help that,’ said the cat. ‘We’re all mad here.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

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Stephen King’s Pet Sematary  shows King always one to delve into our deepest fears hit it dead on when a strange pet burial ground and a cat name Churchill form the jumping off into the error and results of bring the dead back to life.  Since earliest history–see my entry yesterday– the cat has often been thought of as a  familiar for witches or actually another form for them as well as their master Satan.  What better first step to this descent to loss and madness than this long held evil creature of the shadow and the darkness being the jumping off point.

Cats were the gangsters of the animal world, living outside the law and often dying there. There were a great many of them who never grew old by the fire.”- Stephen King, Pet Semetary

Of course the Harry Potter Books/movies would have to have a cat (actually there’s Hermione’s familiar that is always after Ron’s Rat too) as wizards and witches (as previously noted) have a long history  association and functional needs.   However Mrs. Norris–the Caretaker Argus Filch’s cat is more of watch dog (opps sorry Mrs. Norris) than what one would think of as a witch’s familiar, but if Filch is a wizard then the cat would seem to be actually preforming as a asset of the man and in fact she (a huge Maine Coon) is often seen as an announcement of his impending arrival and that would seem to work very well indeed.

“He’s the most intelligent of his kind I’ve ever met.” —Sirius Black regarding Crookshanks (Hermione’s Cat)

 

Another writer known for dealing with the dark side, Poe tells the story of Pluto (The Black Cat) the narrator’s cat who he abuses and then attempts to kill he doesn’t succeed with the cat but does manage to kill his wife when she tries to intervene.  Finally the cat has his revenge when to hide the crime the narrator seals his wife’s  body within a wall, only to be discovered when the sounds of the cat, also entombed but obviously still alive betrays him.  Again this shows us the opinion that cat are survivors—the nine lives theory–and that their mysterious ways and quiet comings and goings make them dangerous adversaries and  in this case even the source of retribution.

“This latter was a remarkably large and beautiful animal, entirely black, and sagacious to an astonishing degree.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, The Black Cat