TulsaPets Magazine November 2021

26 TulsaPets • November/December 2021 Mark Twain Had High Regard for Cats by Rowena Mills M ark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835–1910) was a journalist, novelist, short-story writer, and lecturer. But did you know he was also an ailurophile? (It’s Greek for “lover of cats.”) Under the pseudonym Mark Twain, he wrote mostly travel narra- tives and boyhood adventure stories. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) mentions a cat named Peter. Cats crop up in Twain’s other works, including a book of bedtime stories that he had told to his daughters, Concerning Cats: Two Tales by Mark Twain (published in 1959). Twain expressed regard for cats in pithy phrases: “If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat” and “When a man loves cats, I am his friend and comrade, without further introduction.” In his 1894 novel Pudd’nhead Wilson , Twain wrote, “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?” He said, “Some people scorn a cat and think it not an essential; but the Clemens tribe are not of these.” At one time, he had 19 felines. He gave them colorful names — Apollinaris, Beelzebub, Blatherskite, Buffalo Bill, Satan, Sin, Sour Mash, Tammany, Zoroaster, Soapy Sal, and Pestilence. After the death of Twain’s wife, Olivia Langdon Clemens (1845– 1904), their daughter Clara went to a sanitorium to regain her own health. She took care of a cat, Bambino, until another patient reported her. Twain took Bambino, who helped Twain through deep depression. When Bambino was missing in New York City, Twain offered a $5 reward (more money than it sounds like now) for anyone who could return the kitty to his home at 21 Fifth Avenue. The advertisement in the New York American read, “Have you seen a distinguished-looking black cat that looks as if it might be lost? If you have, take it to Mark Twain, for it may be his.” Twain described Bambino: “Large and intensely black; thick, velvety fur; has a faint fringe of white hair across his chest; not easy to find in ordinary light.” Bambino is reported to have returned home. On Twain’s lecture tours, he rented cats. His biographer Albert Bigelow Paine, who was with him in Dublin, New Hampshire, in 1906, described how Twain rented three kittens for the summer. He named one Sackcloth. The other two (identical) were jointly called Ashes. Paine said when Twain was about to enter a screen door into a hall, two kittens ran up in front of him and stood waiting. With “grave politeness,” Twain opened the door and said, “Walk in, gentlemen. I always give precedence to royalty.” When Twain moved on, he left the rented kitties where they were — but he provided enough money to take care of them for the rest of their lives. Twain wrote in 1902, “A man’s treatment of a dog is no indi- cation of the man’s nature, but his treatment of a cat is. It is the critical test. None but the humane treat a cat well.” Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) and a tuxedo kitten make a dapper pair. Photograph by Albert Bigelow Paine, 1906. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, gift of John Seelye. FOCUS ON FELINES