Dear Feles,
Here's the problem, pussycat. Finding dogs of great literary pedigree is no problem at all. Open a book, any book, of dog stories and out they tumble: big dogs and brave dogs, loyal dogs and little ones, funny dogs and friendly dogs, every breed and station, in third or first "person". It seems that nearly everyone who ever picked up a pen, from Herodotus and the dog of Marathon down to Twain and Garth Stein, has written something admirable about some admirable dog. You needn't agree with the premise to concede the point, I think. Dogs simply have a better press, particularly in fiction.
Not that cats are under-represented in literature. Plenty of cats to be found in books. The problem is neither in the quantity of the cats nor the quality of the writing. Many great writers have written most excellent cats, and true. But the cat, you won't mind me saying, tends to complicate rather than simplify the stories of even the greatest writers. Dogs, as you know, are nothing if not easy to read. Cats, right or wrong, tend to the inscrutable, or at the very least suggest a complexity, on the page as in life, to which most dogs would not even think to aspire.
And it doesn't seem much to matter the mood of the story or the period in which it was written, does it? Tragedy to comedy and all the stories in-between, the dog, while a versatile performer, and just as capable of terrifying the reader as any other dangerous or misunderstood beast, tends to be forthright, even in scenes of great violence or dark menace. No one suspects even The Hound of the Baskervilles of cunning, as such, or imagines that the bloodhounds chased Eliza our of malice.
But then, when a dog is admirable, and particularly when a dog is brave, as in fiction they so often are, it isn't often that there's anything deliberative in that, either. People who write professionally about dogs may have more to say on the subject, but the writers with a story that requires a dog, in even the best stories, if you can appreciate the distinction, tend to invest dogs, good or bad, with unsurprisingly pure motives.
Funny stories about dogs, I won't even go into here. The advantage is obvious. Almost any dog can play the clown. Think of Wodehouse. There's nothing to adding a dog to the joke. Almost any dog will do, but as Wodehouse proves, there's nothing funnier than Pekes. Even a cat would have to admit, I think that Pekes are inherently funny.
I can't explain all this in any rational way. It would seem to be a feature of human evolution that while we took cats and dogs into our caves and company at roughly the same time and with something like the same regularity since, we've never been fully comfortable with the assumption, made so easily in the case of the dog, that domestication made an end of anxiety. Cats can still make us nervous, some of us, and more than cats might think.
To return to literature, even our first stories confirm or establish this unease. Everyone who was ever a child remembers some great dog story from the nursery library: there's Dorothy's brave little Toto to start, and Tock with the clock in his belly from The Phantom Tollbooth, there's Lassie, and Old Yeller, My Dog Skip, and Sounder. Not to say that there are not admirable cats met in the same period, but, you must admit, even the most famous of these, -- the one in the hat, wouldn't you say? -- is a less reassuring or reliable character than a dog.
For whatever reason, the interaction between the feline and the human, at least in literature, is as likely to be complicated by some suspicion, even of the most obvious and benign affection. That not everyone loves cats, it seems, is a fact that must be acknowledged in a way that would never be suggested as necessary when describing a man and his dog. The historical record, despite all the evidence of mutual love between a particular cat and particular companion, seems frequently to made by or with persons prejudiced against the cat very much in mind. Typically, there is this charming story from Boswell, spoiled, at least for our purposes however, as you shall see, by this prejudice:
"I never shall forget the indulgence with which he treated Hodge, his cat: for whom he himself used to go out and buy oysters, lest the servants having that trouble should take a dislike to the poor creature. I am, unluckily, one of those who have an antipathy to a cat, so that I am uneasy when in the room with one; and I own, I frequently suffered a good deal from the presence of this same Hodge. I recollect him one day scrambling up Dr. Johnson's breast, apparently with much satisfaction, while my friend smiling and half-whistling, rubbed down his back, and pulled him by the tail; and when I observed he was a fine cat, saying, 'Why yes, Sir, but I have had cats whom I liked better than this;' and then as if perceiving Hodge to be out of countenance, adding, 'but he is a very fine cat, a very fine cat indeed.'"
How often does a writer admit so easily to a dislike of dogs?! I can think only of that great student of birds, and ironically a great lover of cats, Edward Lear, who did not make any secret of his abiding aversion to dogs.
When it was agreed that we would have a reading series at the bookstore this August, and that we should call it "Dog Days," there was of course someone who was quick to insist that some time must be set aside for stories about cats. I will admit, the idea for the series being mine, that I argued, unsuccessfully, against this deviation from our theme. I was not so much persuaded, as gently over-ruled. Don't misunderstand me, no one said we must have an evening of cat stories, but there were those who were so eager to read about cats rather than or in addition to dogs that even I could see the shame of letting such enthusiasm go to waste.
Let me say again, here and now, I have no antipathy to cats, and neither have I any special affinity for dogs. I dislike neither and live with none. My objection then to the inclusion of cats on the program has nothing to do with cats as such, but rather it has everything to do, as I've suggested above, with the difficulty of finding something to read come the day.
As I challenged my coworkers, so I would challenge you to find a story in all of literature, a really worthy, well written, thoughtful and valuable story, of just the right length and tone for a public reading, and written for an adult audience, a story about a cat, in which the cat does not figure as either a malevolent or at best a character indifferent to the fate of the human beings described. No easy thing, let me tell you.
This may well be unjust, but the fact remains that most cats to be found in most famous short stories, hell, in most of English literature, even in the anthologies compiled to celebrate all things feline, are not necessarily very... well, nice. When not the actual agent of supernatural destruction, or the inadvertent cause of, say, a murderer's discovery, the cats I've come across in books tend to step more often over corpses than daisies. Even in stories without actual physical violence, the cat most often is called on as a mute witness to something more unpleasant than not, is made to symbolize some detachment, or indifference to human suffering, and very seldom, in my experience, rescues a baby, or fends off a burglar, or pines away for love.
So, you see the problem don't you? The story I plan myself to read on August twentieth, while a charming and very funny piece, and quite typical of the supreme economy and wit of the great English short story writer, Hector Hugh Munro, known as Saki,does not, from Tobermory's perspective, end well. Yet this story, so far as I can tell, is in every single collection of cat stories. Well it should be, though it hardly speaks much for either the affection we humans feel for cats or the abundance of sweet-tempered, loyal and happy cats in literature, that this should be the one story all such anthologies of the last one hundred years should have in common. So, on we go, to find anything else so good, and funny, and perhaps not quite so mean.
(Then there is, just as aside, the to me mystifying prejudices of even those who love cats. Having found what I thought a charming story by Colette, I presented it as a strong possibility to the very woman who had won the point in the first place of having an evening of cat stories in addition to the evenings devoted to dogs. She read the first paragraph, which I thought perfect, and promptly closed the book. "I don't really like Persians," she said, "or Colette, much." Je vous demande, qui est équitable?)
So, my dear, come the night of, should any actual cats come to the reading, they will of course be welcome. Be warned though, it may be no easy thing getting this thing right. As Wodehouse, himself a genuine lover of cats as well as dogs, most famously said, "Cats are not dogs!"
I think I can be forgiven, just this once, for adding only, "amen." Though I remain,
Most sincerely yours, etc.
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