The books section of the Guardian lists its choice of the top ten cats in literature (click on screenshot). I’ll just give some of the introduction by author Lynne Truss and then list the cats and the books where they appear (there’s a description of each cat, but you can read that for yourself.
Truss:
A couple of months after I took up my post as literary editor of the Listener in the autumn of 1986, I decided to write a review for the Christmas double issue: a review of two books about cats. I wrote it, marked it up for the typesetters, sent it off, and thought nothing more about it until one of the subeditors brought the corrected galley proof through to my office. “Lynne,” she said solemnly, “you won’t publish this under your own name, will you?” I replied cheerfully that I had been intending to, yes. Which was when she explained a great truth to me – that once a literary woman associates her name with cats, no one will take her seriously again.
I have been haunted by that conversation ever since. In my heart, I know that she was right. But on the other hand, cats are such good material. When I was asked to write a gothic novella three years ago, I did not hesitate to propose a funny one about evil, talking cats.
And now I’ve written a follow-up: The Lunar Cats. This time, we meet a ginger kitten mob boss who talks like Barbara Windsor and a mild scientific cat from the 18th century who voyages on the Endeavour with Captain Cook. It seems obvious to me that cats are clever and totally lacking in altruism. This means you can believe almost anything of them.
The following are masterworks by people who were bravely prepared to take the risk of being associated with cats. Noticeably, though, nearly all of them are male, so perhaps the subeditor’s warning should still stand.
1. Tobermory by Saki (HH Munro)
Talking cat2. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Superior cat3. Edward the Conqueror by Roald Dahl
Reincarnated genius cat4. The Silent Miaow translated from the feline by Paul Gallico
Guru cat5. Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats by TS Eliot
Criminal mastermind cat6. Thomasina, the Cat Who Thought She Was God by Paul Gallico
Mystical cat7. A Case of Murder by Vernon Scannell
Avenging cat8. Felidae by Akif Pirinçci
Sleuthing cat9. The Cats’ Protection League by Roger McGough
Dangerous cat10. Why Cats Paint by Heather Busch and Burton Silver
Aesthetic cat
Each link goes to a shop or a review. I’ve read #2, 4, 5, and #10, which is a must-read for cat lovers. You may think Why Cats Paint is a cheesy title, but it’s a wonderful satire of the pretentiousness of much art criticism.
But Truss has a serious omission: one of the most famous and appealing cats in literature: Behemoth the pistol-packing cat in the wonderful novel The Master and Margarita by Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov. He’s not only a cat to remember, but the book is one of the best pieces of fiction I’ve read in several years (it satirizes Soviet Russia).
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If humans acted like cats, this is how they’d behave. One lacuna: “Cat Man Chris” doesn’t stick his butt into anyone’s face!
The tool used will be CRISPR, the method of gene-editing for which Jennifer Doudna and Emannuelle Charpentier won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry two years ago. Here’s how it’s done:
Allergies are most associated with the fur and dander that cats shed into the environment, but those aren’t the true culprit. A protein produced by cats called Fel d 1—which ends up in their saliva and tears and, by extension, the fur that they’re constantly cleaning—is thought to cause over 90% of cat allergies. This has made the protein an appealing target for scientists trying to reduce the burden of cat allergies, which may affect up to 20% of people.
Researchers at the Virginia-based biotech company InBio (previously called Indoor Biotechnologies) have been working on their own approach. They’re hoping to use CRISPR, the Nobel Prize-winning gene editing tech, to produce cats that simply make little to no Fel d 1. In their latest research, published Monday in The CRISPR Journal, they say they’ve collected evidence that this can be done effectively and safely.
Here’s the free paper, which is only suggestive:
The authors show that they can achieve in vitro inactivations of the gene in tissue-cultured cat cells, but they have not produced living cats with the inactive gene. Nor have they shown that knocking out the gene has no harmful effects: this is an extrapolation from lab work showing that the protein is tolerant of many substitutions among different felid species, which to them implies that the protein itself is not essential for viabilty. That’s not a logical conclusion, though they may be right. The article goes on, restating what I just said:
Analyzing the DNA of 50 domestic cats, they found regions along two genes primarily involved in producing Fel d 1 that would be suitable for editing with CRISPR. When they compared the genes of these cats to those from eight wild cat species, they also found that there was a lot of variation between the groups. That could indicate, as other research has suggested, that Fel d 1 is non-essential to cat biology and can thus be eliminated without any health risks. (Some cat breeds, like the Russian blue and Balinese, are often touted as being better for people with allergies because they may naturally produce less Fel d 1.) Lastly, the team used CRISPR on cat cells in the lab, which seemed to be effective at knocking out Fel d 1 and appeared to produce no off-target edits in the areas they predicted that edits would most likely happen.
The upshot is that we’re a long-long way from producing hypoallergenic cats, and gene editing, as Matthew shows in his new book, can have all sorts of unexpected and dire consequences (it’s prohibited in humans). I’d say to just tolerate the allergy or get a Russian Blue. It’s worth the sneezes!
The ‘cats in literature’ somehow overlooked Charlotte in “Publish and Perish: Three Tales of Terror and Tenure” by James Hynes.
Of course Puss in Boots by Charles Perrault should be considered pretty significant cat literature, from the 1600’s no less!
Tobermory from Saki’s The Chronicles of Clovis was mentioned below the line just the other day. An excellent story.
I am so glad you mentioned The Master and Margarita! It is a great and very vividly weird book, and the cat character is a star. That book is beloved by almost everyone who reads it, but I didn’t even hear about it until I was in my 20s. It would be really hard for me to pick the best Russian novel, but Master and Margarita should be in the top ten, and it’s for some reason less widely known and less widely taught (at least when I was in school) than other Russian classics. I think young people would really love the book, and it could easily be taught in high school. It’s a great and exciting story, and the characters in it are unforgettable.
I’m convinced – one to add to the l-o-n-g list of books I really must read. Thanks, Désirée (and PCC(E), too).
It delights me to second a book recommendation on here! I’ve had so many good books recommended from readers and writers of these posts.
Well, a lot of things. That total lack of altruism would rule a lot of different things out of consideration though.
I can’t say that I’ve read more than one of those books though, and I’ve only heard of a couple more. Obviously Truss’s reading choices and mine don’t overlap much.
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And what’s in it for the cat? (Don’t give me the “existence” line ; these are obviously going to be bred pretty much to order. If sales in November are likely to be down, the breeding program will be decreased in April-May.)
At least they’re considering the issue from the cat’s point of view. but the more likely outcome from producing the knocked-out cats would be that they find an aspect of the actual biology of cats for which Fel d1 is essential. Unless, of course, you’re going to claim that we fully understand the biology of this protein that all cats have, but whose use we don’t know.
Surely a less-challenging strategy would be to find a member of the cat clan whose analogue of Fel d1 is less stimulating to sensitive humans and see if substituting that version into F.sylvestris (var) produces a sufficiently hypo- (sense: low, lower) allergenic cat, rather than the an-(sense: none, whatsoever, not a molecule, jot or tittle) allergenic cat. There’s a better chance that the for-cat effects of the Fel d1 analogy would still be present. Of course, that would also illuminate the cat-biology aspect too.
(As I type, the TV is playing Slartibartfast’s speech to Dentarthurdent about how the Earth was built for the Mice. And I wonder, why did the mice include cats in the job spec? Or did some colleague of Slartibartfast have a thing for cats, parallelling his thing for fjords, even when working on coastal Africa?)
… and that’s in systems that we think we understand, not ones which we admit that we don’t understand.
As if that would even slow down someone who can persuade a sufficiently high-up politician (or a rich enough businessman, who can buy enough politicians : functionally indistinguishable) that there is sufficient profit to be had there.
Reading TFP :
Well, finding out what manages that is likely to not have such significant consequences as going straight for obliteration. Scalpel, or chainsaw?
And from Archy and Mehitabel:
this is the song of mehitabel
of mehitabel the alley cat
as i wrote you before boss
mehitabel is a believer
in the pythagorean
theory of the transmigration
of the soul and she claims
that formerly her spirit
was incarnated in the body
of cleopatra
that was a long time ago
and one must not be
surprised if mehitabel
has forgotten some of her
more regal manners
i have had my ups and downs
but wotthehell wotthehell
yesterday sceptres and crowns
fried oysters and velvet gowns
and today i herd with bums
but wotthehell wotthehell
i wake the world from sleep
as i caper and sing and leap
when i sing my wild free tune
wotthehell wotthehell
under the blear eyed moon
i am pelted with cast off shoon
but wotthehell wotthehell
do you think that i would change
my present freedom to range
for a castle or moated grange
wotthehell wotthehell
cage me and i d go frantic
my life is so romantic
capricious and corybantic
and i m toujours gai toujours gai
i know that i am bound
for a journey down the sound
in the midst of a refuse mound
but wotthehell wotthehell
oh i should worry and fret
death and i will coquette
there s a dance in the old dame yet
toujours gai toujours gai
i once was an innocent kit
wotthehell wotthehell
with a ribbon my neck to fit
and bells tied onto it
o wotthehell wotthehell
but a maltese cat came by
with a come hither look in his eye
and a song that soared to the sky
and wotthehell wotthehell
and i followed adown the street
the pad of his rhythmical feet
o permit me again to repeat
wotthehell wotthehell
my youth i shall never forget
but there s nothing i really regret
wotthehell wotthehell
there s a dance in the old dame yet
toujours gai toujours gai
the things that i had not ought to
i do because i ve gotto
wotthehell wotthehell
and i end with my favorite motto
toujours gai toujours gai
boss sometimes i think
that our friend mehitabel
is a trifle too gay
Wotthehell😻😻