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Cats in literature
Many writers focused on cats, showed them in the course of books in the background or as a main character. A good many of these artists were also writers having a passion for the cat tribe in their everyday life
Homère, Plutarque and Virgile have already mentioned cats in their days. In the Middle-Ages, the farces and the fables told stories of cats like the one of Tibert in The novel of Renart.
Some authors like Ronsart did not appreciate him much and other ones loved him like Montaigne or Du Bellay. You can’t be indifferent towards the cat : personified with the vilest or the most charming features…..
Jean De La Fontaine in his fables gave us wonderful caricatures such as the ones of Rominagrobis or Grippeminaud. Who forgot Puss in boots of Charles Perrault in the Tales of Mother Goose?
Chateaubriand, a cat lover rose up against Buffon who denounced cat cunning. This cat just strolls in literature, from century to century to the 19th century with Théophile Gautier who described his misadventures in Private menagerie, with E.A Poe in “The black cat ” foretelling ill omen, with Rudyard Kipling in The cat who leaves alone, with Charles Dickens and many other ones.
Cats are pervasive in the life and the work of some writers like Paul Léautaud with his Bestiary, André Malraux, Jean Cocteau or Colette with The female cat or Dialogue of animals.
Emile Zola also described the experience of a fancy cat living free like stray cats in The paradise of cats.
We keep in mind for ever some cats such as the cat of Cheshire of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Caroll or the two Siamese cats being detectives with a journalist in the novels written by Lilian Jackson Braun.
Nowadays, there’s still some bond between cats and writers as contemporary books show such as the ones of Yves Navarre, A cat’s life, of Louis Nucera His majesty the cat or the ones of Patricia Highsmith, Cats and men.
A cat for each writer, pen fellow or imaginary character..A real link has united cats and writers for ages. And as Aldous Huxley said :”If you want to write, have some cats ” !
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