He had the air of one who knows he must make the most of what Fate offers before it is withdrawn.On Cats by Doris Lessing D o r i s L e s s i n gįrom the book jacket: Doris Lessing's love affair with cats began at a young age, when she became intrigued with the semi-feral creatures on the African farm where she grew up. He climbed on to the chair and lay down and looked steadily at me. I said to him, he could use this chair, but only this chair this was his chair, and he must not ask for more. I opened the kitchen door and he came in. The orange cat stood out in the rain on the balcony, his fur streaked ark with running water, and looked at me.

The hot weather ended and it began to rain. She also owned a El Magnifico and my favorite, Rufus the Survivor, a stray that came to love and be loved. Grey cat -despite tremendous personality- is nonetheless, Grey cat. In On Cats, Lessing seems to oblige the cats in their naming. To earn a love of a cat, is there anything better? The acknowledgement of love from a cat is an extraordinary thing. Indeed, as any cat owner will attest, so much of cat is withheld, kept safe, extended only when they feel utterly at ease. One for the humans, one for the stature, and one that only the cat himself knows. Eliot claimed that all cats had three names. In his masterful collection of feline-inspired verse, T. Owning pets makes parents of us all-perhaps why we are so devoted to it. Her varied, wonderful, lifetime’s collection of cats.įrom the swarm of feral-turned-domestic cats that grew out of hand on the farm of her childhood to a few particular sorts she housed in London, there have always been cats in Lessing's life.Īs George Mikes so trenchantly observed in his classic satire, How to Be A Brit, the English and their pets have a particular relationship.

On Cats is a collection of various essays Lessing wrote on the matter of cats. And, when I'd finished, yawn, deliberate, foppish, showing an ice-cream pink mouth and curled pink tongue.

She would ignore me at first then turn her head, silkily arrogant, and half close her eyes for each praise-name, each one separately. Oh cat I'd say, or pray: be- oootiful cat! Delicious cat! Exquisite cat! Satiny cat! Cat like a soft owl, cat with paws like moths, jewelled cat, miraculous cat! Cat, cat, cat, cat. Or perhaps it is a gift that this woman, this Nobel Prize–winning author who so understood humans at their most complex levels, was able to apply the same insight to cats.