Cats, cats cats
Olivia Manning
Somewhere a Cat Is Wafting Derek Tangye (Michael Joseph £4.95) The EverlastIngCat Mildred Kirk (Faber & Faber £4.95) Mr Tangye's book came to me when I was in hospital. I read it with welling eyes and long pauses in which to recover my equanimity.
And why, for goodness sake? What is there for tears in those noble creatures that the ancient Egyptians so rightly worshipped?
The cat was described by someone who really knew what he was talking as the ani mal most perfectly adjusted to life on this planet. But, perfectly adjusted or not, Ms are only human and die like the rest of us. And to Mr Tangye's cats, the famous cats of Minack, the dreaded day must come for each, the day when life slows to a stop and the once warm, vital, loved and loving little body must be laid in earth.
But that was not the only reason for my tears. After all, death is death. We all know we've got it coming. The trouble was that in a state of post-operative trauma, I was worrying myself sick about my brown Burmese, Miou, my constant companion, a fifteenyear-old who could not, in the nature of things, be with me much longer. My husband was on leave. Miou was being looked after but I knew he would have to spend long days alone. Friends who went in to feed him reported that every time he heard a step on the stair, he ran out and sat watching the door, expecting me to come in. I opened the packet that contained Mr Tangye's book and read the title. For the first time since the accident that had come down on me out of a clear sky, I put my head down and howled.
Those who dislike cats (fools, for the most part) will say 'There you are, there's your cat lover! A moron who would sell his grandmother up the river for the sake of some old moggie who is exactly the same as a million other moggies that fight, raid dustbins and make the night hideous with their sexual excesses.'
What ignorance! The cat of one's heart is a gentle creature reposeful, beautiful, softer than silk, intelligent, understanding, sympathetic. . . Need I go on? If you are ill, he will spend the whole day lying on the bed beside you and no inducement will persuade him to desert you. I say 'he' for convenience sake (the male sex has managed to get a great deal of kudos out of that convention) but the female of the species gives love and pleasure with even greater ardour. She is, also, much more intelligent, having in the wild state, had to pit her wits against the jungle in order to bring up her young.
There is no cat lover who will not agree with me and Derek Tangye is a prince and poet of cat lovers. Strangely enough, how. ever, he is not a cradle cat-lover but a mere convert. He began, God forgive him, by being a dog man who disliked cats until he fell into the paws of Monty in Room 205 of the Savoy Hotel. The kitten with this grand address was, he tells us, the 'color iwhy 'color' Michael Joseph?] crushed autumn bracken' but, of course, a great deal more than that. Mr Tangye, once converted, went into the deep end of the faith. Monty possessed him for fifteen years or so, then came Lama, Ambrose and Oliver, the famed cats of Minack, a Cornish flower farm that the Tangyes ran with all the tribulations of those who put their trust in nature. The result has been three delightful books: A Cat in the Window, Lama and A Cat Affair which now, in a volume of 365 pages, beautifully illustrated, are collected under the entrancing title Somewhere a Cat Is Waiting. On the jacket, rising above a bower of flowers, are the two intent watching and waiting green eyes of Lama, the mysterious cat who came from nowhere. It is hard to think of any gift costing less than £5 that will give more pleasure to cat people this year.
Mildred Kirk's The Everlasting Cat is quite another matter. I hasten to warn cat lovers that among many pleasant anecdotes and much cat lore from ancient times there are explicit records of cat persecution carried out by the superstitious, ignorant, stupid, brutal and sadistic monsters of our race during the • darkest days of out degraded history. With the cat kind almost wiped out, the rats were glad in the land the cats might look down from their Elysium and see their tormentors extinguished, in their turn, by bubonic plague. Apart from this record of horror Miss Kirk has some interesting things to say about cat history. The Chinese, she tells us, could tell the time of days from a cat's eyes. The pupils, apparently, begin to narrow up till mid-day and then steadily to dilate until dark. I discussed this with my own cat who said he couldn't say he'd noticed it. Still, here is all the cat lore anyone could want and a great deal one would prefer not to know about. Thank God cats have come into their own again. Cats are the favourite pets of the Russians and they're not doing too badly here, either.
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