Keats and Cats

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Apr 27

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Reading through Keats's letters again has inspired Susan Wolfson to put together the following post on Keats and Cats. Wolfson considered that Keats was a cat person - unlike Byron and Wordsworth, for example, who were dog lovers. Did you know that the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome where Keats and Shelley are buried is also a haven for cats? Read about the history of the cat colony here. Why should the old Cat come to me? The Cat is not an old Maid herself--her daughter is a proof of it--I have questioned her--I have look’d at the lines of her paw--I have felt her pulse--to no purpose--Why should the old Cat come to me?I ask myself--and myselfhas not a word to answer. The old cats who livein the Protestant cemetery in Romefaithfully, quietly to Keats’s grave have comeThey sit among the violetsas if statues of themselveswith not a word to answer

(John Keats, 3 January 1819,

poetic forming by Susan Wolfson, 2 March 2018)

If you'd like some more feline-inspired verse, why not read Keats's 1818 poem 'To Mrs Reynold's Cat': Cat! who hast pass’d thy grand climacteric,How many mice and rats hast in thy daysDestroy’d? How many tit bits stolen? GazeWith those bright languid segments green, and prickThose velvet ears - but pr’ythee do not stickThy latent talons in me - and upraiseThy gentle mew - and tell me all thy frays,Of fish and mice, and rats and tender chick.Nay, look not down, nor lick thy dainty wrists -For all thy wheezy asthma - and for allThy tail’s tip is nick’d off - and though the fistsOf many a maid have given thee many a maul,Still is that fur as soft, as when the listsIn youth thou enter’dest on glass bottled wall.