Although La Fontaine in his fables shows such a delicate appreciation of
their character and ways, it is doubtful whether he honestly loved cats.
But his friend and patron, the Duchess of Bouillon, was so devoted to
them that she requested the poet to make her a copy with his own hand of
all his fables in which pussy appears. The exercise-book in which they
were written was discovered a few years ago among the Bouillon papers.
Baudelaire, it is said, could never pass a cat in the street without
stopping to stroke and fondle it. "Many a time," said Champfleury, "when
he and I have been walking together, have we stopped to look at a cat
curled luxuriously in a pile of fresh white linen, revelling in the
cleanliness of the newly ironed fabrics. Into what fits of contemplation
have we fallen before such windows, while the coquettish laundresses
struck attitudes at the ironing boards, under the mistaken impression
that we were admiring them." It was also related of Baudelaire that,
"going for the first time to a house, he is restless and uneasy until he
has seen the household cat. But when he sees it, he takes it up, kisses
and strokes it, and is so completely absorbed in it, that he makes no
answer to what is said to him."
Professor Huxley's notorious fondness for cats was a fad which he shared
with Paul de Koch, the novelist, who, at one time, kept as many as
thirty cats in his house. Many descriptions of them are to be found
scattered through his novels.
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