The Cat Days of Summer

Now that summer is dwindling toward its end, I keep hearing people refer not-so-nostalgically to “the dog days of summer.” Naturally, there would be something wrong with me if I didn’t protest. What about “the cat days of summer”? Aren’t cats entitled to their days in the sultry sun?

I have read many official descriptions of “dog days,” and it makes perfect sense that Sirius, the “dog star,” rises and sets with the sun from early July through mid-August. But knowing as all Cat Ladies do that cats rule Planet Earth, should we circulate a petition to honor a “cat star” in the summer, too? Or are cats better suited to dominate the months of October and November?

No matter the official season, it’s easy to fall for felines and advocate for their deserved supremacy!

Sirius, move over. Lucius is orbiting and about to pounce. National Cat Day is only two months and two days away....

Query of the Day: Will you sign my petition?

Catcall

Much as I love finding well-placed double entendres in texts, I have never before come across “catcall” used in the context of a casting call for cats.

I just finished reading a book that is deservedly on the best-seller list: Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M, Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and the Dawn of the Modern Woman, by Sam Wasson. For anybody who is a Breakfast at Tiffany’s junkie, this book is a must-read. There is fascinating and brand-new information about Audrey Hepburn, Truman Capote, George Peppard, Patricia Neal, Henri Mancini (Audrey Hepburn said he was the “hippest cat”), and all of the movie’s major players, both in front of and behind the camera, including the only feline character in the film, who was aptly named “Cat.”

Buy the book and go immediately to page 116 to read all about the cats who auditioned in New York City to play the part of Holly Golightly’s orange tabby cat. The description of the casting call puts the reader right in the director’s seat, trying to determine which of the twenty-five orange cats deserved movie contracts. A twelve-pounder named Orangey won star billing (twelve cats were used "in rotation").

I haven’t yet moved into the realm of being a stage mother of our ten felines. But reading this new book made me think about our three orange boys, and whether Lucius or Leo (Linus is too diminutive) could star in a remake of the Hollywood classic.

Should Leo get the part, I could always audition Lucius for a new production of Sunset Boulevard. I can hear him now, all too well: “All right, Cat Lady, I'm ready for my close-up.”

Query of the Day: What’s your favorite feline scene from Breakfast at Tiffany’s?

Love Bites

I grew up in New Orleans and know all about vampires, thanks to Anne Rice and her best-selling series The Vampire Chronicles. Who could forget Lestat de Lioncourt, a nobleman turned vampire? I also am of the Dark Shadows vintage. Does anyone reading this blog remember dear Barnabus?

Though it has taken me a while to get up to speed with The Twilight Saga and the likes of Bella and Edward, I have heard of the actress Kristen Stewart and can easily recognize her picture on the cover of supermarket tabloids. Now, I can report on a recent finding, courtesy of a friend who spotted an item in People.

If trapped on a desert island, Ms. Stewart would designate her cat, Max, as her “must-have.”

“I’m going to be a crazy cat lady one day,” she announces in a “revelation” on a page titled “Chatter,” accompanied by a come-hither photograph of the comely actress and an inset snapshot of her orange-and-white cat. “We have a really strong, really weird codependent, almost Bella/Edward relationship.”

When you’re as young as Ms. Stewart, codependency is probably weird. For the rest of us Cat Ladies, codependency is the new normal.

I’ll take love bites from Alvar (pictured here), who has the longest fangs of our ten cats, over vampire attacks any day, any time, and in any parallel universe.

Query of the Day: Does your cat give you love bites?

Madmen and Their Cats

Long before Don Draper arrived stylishly on the scene in the TV series Mad Men, there were the original madmen…and their cats. I’m referring to the men who were crazy for felines, among other mad obsessions, and who were often confined to lunatic asylums to be cured.

While following the hype associated with this season’s Mad Men, I thought back to my freshman-year English classes at Wellesley, where I was introduced to the 18th-century English visionary Christopher Smart. To say that he worshipped his cat Jeoffry would be a gross understatement. In his famous poem Jubilate Agno, the noted madman writes of Jeoffry:

For he will not do destruction, if he is well-fed, neither will he spit without provocation.

For he purrs in thankfulness, when God tells him he's a good Cat.

For he is an instrument for the children to learn benevolence upon.

For every house is incomplete without him and a blessing is lacking in the spirit.

Could Don Draper and his ace copywriting team have created a better campaign for advertising the virtues of cats? And the following two verses remind me of the ever-dapper and ruthless creative director, the Mad Man himself:

For he is the quickest to his mark of any creature.

For he is tenacious of his point.

Don excels as a business force, and the buzz that surrounds him is palpable. I know how Christopher Smart felt when he wrote about Jeoffry, “For by stroking of him I have found out electricity.” With Lucius, the primary object of this Cat Lady’s fixation, I am shocked by a similar high-voltage force of love.

I trust that Don would approve of this snapshot of Lucius striking a pose on a vintage midcentury barstool.

Query of the Day: Do I qualify as a madwoman?