The Book, Cat, & Cat Book Lovers Almanac

of historical trivia regarding books, cats, and other animals. Actually this blog has evolved so that it is described better as a blog about cats in history and culture. And we take as a theme the advice of Aldous Huxley: If you want to be a writer, get some cats. Don't forget to see the archived articles linked at the bottom of the page.

August 30, 2014

August 30, 1811

Theophile Gautier (August 30, 1811 to October 23, 1872), the French writer, excelled in a nation of cat lovers, at loving cats. He is remembered as a journalist (at Le Moniteur universel, before obtaining the editorship of L'Artiste, an important periodical,  in 1856) but he wrote in many genres and supported himself as a man of letters, setting a model for a Bohemian life style at the same time. His fame was such that Oscar Wilde had his own hero of debauchery, Dorian Gray, read Gautier's poetry. But Gautier's aestheticism always implied cats for cats' sake.

Theophile Gautier said: "The pashas love tigers, I love cats, which are the tigers of the poor." This is echoed by the next generation, when Fernand Mery said "God made the cat in order that humankind might have the pleasure of caressing the tiger." Carl Van Vechten echoed Gautier when he titled his book about cats in literature and history, The Tiger in the House (1920). I suspect the writer who first mentioned house cats and tigers is obscured by the passage of millenia.

Theophile Gautier's love for cats, is not what defined his bohemianism. He said "All my life I have been as fond of animals in general and of cats in particular as any Brahmin or old maid."
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