A home without a cat, and a well-fed, well-petted and properly revered cat, may be a perfect house, but how can it prove its title? — Mark Twain
Ernest Hemingway was a fine writer. He was an even finer man. How do I know this? He appreciated cats. More than this, he really adored them. They inspired him and made him laugh. Cats are the ideal companions for a writer. They lounge about attractively and do not demand to be taken for walks. Even better, they can use the bathroom without dragging you out to share the experience.
To say that you love cats is to declare yourself to possess a capacity and amusement for eccentricity and individuality; that you appreciate something just for "being", rather than what it "does". This recalls a philosophical spat I had years ago with a big Swede who argued rudely that cats were useless, but his dog - oh, his dog had function and purpose. This really flummoxed me until I went home that night and was distracted by the preternatural beauty of my Siamese cat, and an epiphany hit me. She didn't have to "do" anything.
Her "being" was enough to justify her existence. She brought joy and magic to my life that haunts me to this day. Beauty is its own excuse for being, and cats are beauty and grace incarnate. They are primal and unfathomable. We can only aspire to be as cool as cats, which is why people either love them or are helplessly envious of them and profess to hate them, or work to undermine their freedom.
Article comments
1 - Jean Naimard
You obviously don’t know what Socialism is.
It certainly is not nitpicking regulation like you demonstrate being done in the least socialist country in the world, the United States of America.
2 - Douglas Mays
Socialism, schmocialism...an ideal or is it function? I dunno. My cat will deal with it.
I am definately a cat person. I think a few cats need to be on the board of directors...
3 - Douglas Anthony Cooper
This cat-love seems to contradict the report - perhaps apocryphal? - that the random assassination of a cat in Salinger's "For Esmé - with Love and Squalor," was based on an encounter with Hemingway. Apparently, in order to demonstrate to Salinger that he was a hard man, Hemingway picked up his pistol and blew the brains out of an innocent kitty. Salinger was revolted.
I'd love to have this story proved fictional - I'm fond of Hemingway (although I value Salinger more). Please, someone: demonstrate to me that this is libel.
4 - Ashtoreth
That is an interesting story.
I suspect that Hemingway may have been trying to prove in a macho sense how 'hard' ergo 'what a man' he was by symbolically murdering what in his consciousness embodied his feminine or anima; the blasted softness which he dearly loved and needed, but which he was somehow ashamed and afraid of as something he could not control or tame.
The act was not something he would have done alone, I don't think. Sadly, it was all about the reflected shock and horror on the face of Salinger which was the pay-off. It was murder as theater.
It is also a paradox that he loved cats, but hunted lions. The little cat is reflected in the big cat and the big cat in the little cat. But then he had a pattern of pitting himself against the elements and trying to challenge the gods to prove his manhood. The 'Old Man and the Sea' was him.
Sad as this story is (if it is true) it would point to his deep insecurity and splintering from his inner feminine. Note how he kept bonding to and then betraying, symbolically murdering, and splintering from his four wives - again needing to merge with, and needing to dominate and execute the feminine whose power he secretly longed for, feared, and envied. A gun blast fixes everything in the 'two year old' narcissistic mind.
His murder of the cat before an audience showed great narcissism. The cat did not matter, his illusions of 'male hardness' did. How embarrassing for him. It would suggest pathological insecurity in his furious need to 'prove' he was the icon of masculinity he so desperately needed to see himself as, project out to the world, and have reflected back at him; even if an innocent animal had to die to make this statement.
And then he left the house to the cats. Maybe because the independent little beasts loved him best and simply, and because in the end, he could never tame them without killing them, and came to admire and identify with them. As I said, we can only aspire to be as cool as cats. :)
Thank you for your most interesting comment.
5 - Victor Lana
Lots of Hemingway stories are false, even those told by Hemingway himself. I doubt Hemingway would have shot a cat, especially one of his own.
Salinger could have been embellishing or maybe even retelling a story Hemingway told. Remember, Hem was prone to taking a truth (he was an ambulance driver who was wounded delivering chocolate to the troops and it became that he was something of a war hero) and spinning it for all it was worth.
Hemingway shooting a little kitty? Yes, just what those who hated (or envied him) would love us to think. I've been to Key West and even had dinner once at the old homestead, and those cats belong there for all time as per Papa's wish.
6 - Ashtoreth
Jean, jean, I think we area all too aware what socialism is and represents. And for your information, bureaucratic nitpicking is its hallmark.
7 - Douglas Mays
you appreciate something just for 'being'. Very nice words.
I, having about 42 years of cat experience (i was 7 getting my first cat), sometimes have to educate newer cat owners about being a cat. Some folks just don't get it. Amazing, majestic creatures. I do cherish their existance.
Their job of doing nothing? Humans should heed to their actions. Allow yourself to 'be'. Charles Atlas (98 lbs weakling? Old Timers will remember) developed his 'dynamic tension' exersices based on the fact that cats, even though they meditate a lot, are also in very good condition. He watched cats stretch (then jump up on a fence or something) and thought there was something to it.
Anyway, let the cats be!!!!!
best,
DM
8 - Douglas Mays
Douglas A Cooper, nice mention of Salingers "For Esme-With Love and Squalor".
I am familiar. Good of you to bring it up.
9 - Marg Terriode
As it's told by Salinger's biographer, Hemingway shot a chicken, not a cat, to demonstrate the accuracy of a particular breed of handgun he was expounding on. Salinger found it disturbing enough to adapt it for one of his stories, evidently.
10 - Ashtoreth
Hi Marge,
Well, I hope that's true. I'd certainly would rather think he executed a chicken than a cat.
*looks both ways for Vegans with torches and spears - runs* ;)