HS Column 8.8.2000 - A cat can look at a king - but a dictator can seldom bear that look

By Jukka Luoma

The relationship between prominent figures and cats is worthy of research, especially these days when two "first cats" - Miska and Rontti - share the Presidential residence of Mäntyniemi with Tarja Halonen. As always, examples from history provide a few pointers, but how one takes them is a personal matter.

Dictators don't usually go in for cats much. To the cat-lover this means that they - the dictators - cannot abide a free spirit. To the anti-feline fraternity, it means that a dictator cannot abide any other sly, crooked behaviour besides his own.

It is therefore confusing to recall that old photograph of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin animatedly discussing politics whilst holding and petting a satisfied cat in his lap. Lenin admitted that it was hard not to stroke humanity's head, but he managed it nonetheless. Cats, however, were a tougher assignment altogether.

It is not hard to understand Benito Mussolini's dislike of cats. His particular brand of puffed-up pride worked on humans, but it cut no ice with cats. Adolf Hitler liked dogs, he had a German shepherd called Blondi; Josef Stalin, well, he made do with human wolfhounds.

One of history's most famous cat-lovers

was Sir Winston Churchill, who was also a good democrat. The reader can decide for himself how the remarks below by Churchill's private secretary Sir John Colville fit into the model of great men's behaviour. The diary entry is from the morning of July 27, 1940, as the Battle of Britain was approaching its height:

I went into the PM's bedroom at around 10. He was lying in bed in a red dressing gown, smoking a cigar and dictating to Mrs Hill, who sat at his feet with the typewriter. The PM's black cat Nelson, which he brought from the Admiralty and which has quite usurped the position of No.10's official black cat, was stretched out across the bedcovers, and from time to time Winston would look at it lovingly and murmur: "Cat, darling".

To be fair, Winston Churchill liked pretty much any and all animals. He was a great horseracing enthusiast, and he claimed drily that he liked pigs, because "Dogs look up to us, cats look down on us, but pigs look on us as equals". Nevertheless, Churchill particularly enjoyed his dinner-table conversations with Nelson as Hitler's bombs rained down on London during the Blitz.

A clause in the great man's will demands that his home at Chartwell shall in perpetuity be occupied by a ginger cat. The hereditary position is currently occupied by Jock III, named after a former pet.

Other admirers of the feline species

included the US Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, good democrats both. Roosevelt's six-toed grey tabby Slippers was so confident of his position in the White House that guests were expected to walk around him as he sprawled on the carpets of the public areas. And they did.

The prophet Mohammed thought dogs unclean, but he was partial to cats. He reportedly once cut off the sleeve of his robe in order not to wake his sleeping cat, Muezza, when he was called to prayer.

Apparently there is no mention - not one - of cats in the Bible.

The essayist Michel Eyquem de Montaigne was ahead of his time in the 16th century - and ahead of our time, perhaps - when he made his famous remark about his cat: "When I play with her, who knows whether I do not make her more sport than she makes me?"

That celebrated 18th century champion

of common sense and plain speaking Samuel Johnson would personally fetch oysters for his favourite cat Hodge, so that the servants would not take a dislike to the animal from having to serve it themselves. Literary historian Fernand Maury wondered aloud a century later just how many people could pass muster as a cat "for their cleanliness, warmth, patience, dignity and bravery".

Albert Schweitzer, the Bach organist, Nobel Peace Laureate, physician of the mission station at Lambaréné, and friend to Sizi, said: "There are two escapes from life's miseries - music and cats". Sizi's habit of falling asleep on Schweitzer's arm occasionally caused the left-handed doctor to write prescriptions right-handed so as not to disturb her.

So...any inquisitive visitors to Mäntyniemi!

Remember the rule of thumb of Mark Twain (who knew a thing or two because he had eleven): "A home without a cat - and a well-fed, well-petted, and properly revered cat - may be a perfect home, perhaps, but how can it prove title to it?"

And you Finnish children! If your parents have adopted a summer cat for the cottage season and the grown-ups soon start to tell you that it is "going to be set free", don't believe a word of it. Come winter, your little moggy will die alone of starvation.

The author is a Helsingin Sanomat journalist.

Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 31.7.2000