Doris Lessing on cats

Read this book in a private place because there may be times when you cannot help weeping. This is a great book, the product of a master storyteller’s remarkable powers of observation, her understanding of animals and people and her superb writing skills.

Decades after the death of a beloved feline childhood companion, and after acquiescing in the necessary but horrific cull of cats on an African farm, Doris Lessing re-embarked on a voyage of cat discovery. Various incarnations of ship’s cat, vain, flirtatious, self-indulgent, neurotic, courageous, grateful, loving, accompanied her and she was present at births and deaths. She watched and recorded matings, friendships and rivalries, mothers teaching kittens, hunting. She tended animals that were injured or became ill and took on board those that were neglected and needed help.

There was a cat that would only eat lightly cooked calves’ liver and lightly boiled whiting, another who seemed devoid of maternal feelings and who once drew attention to herself by speaking in a language of sausages stolen from a neighbour’s house. One travelled twenty miles across the veld, avoiding predators and crossing two rivers, to return to the farmhouse where she was reared. Another risked her life during a tropical thunderstorm rather than abandon the kittens she had given birth to in a disused mineshaft.

Cats vary in the quantity and quality of their intelligence, Doris Lessing discovered. Rufus, who was constantly challenged by adversity, was calculating and survived by living on his wits. Another male had the inquiring mind of a scientist. Telepathic communication when circumstances permit is not ruled out.

It is to the neutered male, Butchkin, alias El Magnifico, that she is most closely drawn. When they are able to sit quietly together in his old age ‘then he subtly lets me know he understands I am trying to reach him, reach cat, essence of cat, finding the best of him. Human and cat we try to transcend what separates us.’

This book is in essence a love story.