8 Historical Authors Who Loved Cats

Cats, like writers, are known to be moody, introverted, and unpredictable, often behaving in ways that don’t make sense to the people who love them. Maybe that’s why so many writers throughout history have kept cats as companions, whether they devote themselves to just one cat at a time, or turn their homes into a veritable menagerie full of feline energy. (I have three, and often have to remind myself that three cats is more than enough for a one-bedroom apartment in New York City.)

Writer and editor Ilana Kaplan, author of Nora Ephron at the Movies, says having a cat around is a boon to her work. “When your mind is chaotically trying to string sentences together, a cat can be really calming and help you focus. It feels like you have a silent friend that can understand you.” And when she needs a break, she’s got a fluffy, chill buddy right there for company. “It's kind of like a treat when I can take a minute to just pet my cat amid the stress of writer's block.”

Here’s the lowdown on eight historical authors who, like Kaplan, found cats to be an indispensable aid to the writing life.

Patricia Highsmith

The author of The Talented Mr. Ripley and The Price of Salt, was notoriously prickly with her fellow humans, but like many a misanthrope, she harbored a soft spot for cats. “When I get up in the morning, I first of all make the coffee and then I say to my cat, we’re going to have a great day,” Patricia Highsmith once told an interviewer. “My imagination functions much better when I don’t have to speak to people.” After Highsmith died in 1995, her cat, Spider, went to live with another writer, Muriel Spark, who said, “You could tell he had been a writer’s cat. He would sit by me, seriously, as I wrote, while all my other cats filtered away.”

Muriel Spark

Muriel Spark, most famous for penning The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, was a cat-lover in her own right long before she inherited Spider from Highsmith. Spark’s appreciation of cats is immortalized in her novel, A Far Cry from Kensington, in which she extolled the calming presence of a cat on a writer’s frazzled nerves.

“The tranquility of the cat will gradually come to affect you, sitting there at your desk, so that all the excitable qualities that impede your concentration compose themselves and give your mind back the self-command it has lost,” she wrote. “The effect of a cat on your concentration is remarkable, very mysterious.”

Shirley Jackson

Do you want more cats, but are afraid someone will accuse you of having too many cats? Take a page from Shirley Jackson, author of the terrifying short story “The Lottery,” as well as many humorous essays about family life: Only adopt cats who are the same color as the one(s) you already have.

Legend has it that Jackson preferred to have black cats, in part so that her husband, who was not a fan of cats, wouldn’t realize exactly how many felines shared his home. Jackson, who always had at least six cats, is also said to have also enjoyed the idea that people might think she was a witch, what with so many black cats slinking around her.

Ernest Hemingway

Arguably history’s most iconic sexy cat daddy, Ernest Hemingway is famous for founding a colony of polydactyl—that is, six-toed —cats at his home in Key West, Florida. For all his sparse, hard-edged prose, Papa was a big ol’ softie who gushed about the creatures he called “purr factories” and “love sponges.” Fatso, Friendless, Feather Kitty, Princessa, Furhouse, and Uncle Woofer were just a few of the dozens of cats with whom Hemingway shared his home over the years, whether he was in Key West, Paris, Cuba, or Idaho.

“One cat just leads to another... The place is so damned big it doesn't really seem as though there were many cats until you see them all moving like a mass migration at feeding time,” he wrote to his first wife, when he was living with his third wife and 11 cats in Cuba.

T.S. Eliot

Speaking of silly cat names, poet and famous cat enthusiast T.S. Eliot gave Papa Hemingway a run for his money when he wrote Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, which inspired the long-running musical, Cats.

Eliot’s cat characters, including Rum Tum Tugger, Mr. Mistoffelees, Mungojerrie, Rumpleteazer, and Old Deuteronomy, would have been right at home with Princessa and Uncle Woofer. Need some inspiration when naming your new kitten? Look no further than Eliot’s poem, “The Naming of Cats,” which asserts that every cat must have not one, not two, but three different names: an everyday name, a fancy name, and a secret name.

Colette

The London Review of Books once called Colette “the frizzle-headed Cat Woman of 20th-century French writing,” which, while it sounds almost as insulting as J.D. Vance’s childless cat lady remark, might have a grain of truth at its core.

Not only did Colette write a novel called La Chatte, which features a love triangle involving two humans and one cat (the cat’s name is Saha; she comes between lovers Alain and Camille), she left us with some excellent cat quotes. “Time with cats is never wasted,” she is famous for saying, as if she had a vision of her words one day appearing on a gift shop dish towel. And in an accounting of what she “held to be invaluable,” she listed just three things: “my cat, my resolve to travel, and my solitude.” Relatable! (Though I’d add “cat backpack” to that list.)

Mark Twain

“A home without a cat — and a well-fed, well-petted, and properly revered cat—” Mark Twain wrote, “may be a perfect home, perhaps, but how can it prove title?”

Another writer with a penchant for over-the-top cat names (including Blatherskite, Sour Mash, Soapy Sal, Pestilence, and Zoroaster), Twain used to rent kittens when he was on the road, so he could have their company temporarily.  “He didn’t wish to own them, for then he would have to leave them behind uncared for,” explained Twain biographer Albert Bigelow Paine, “so he preferred to rent them and pay sufficiently to ensure their subsequent care.” 

Charles Dickens 

Cat people are familiar with the shenanigans our favorite felines will pull when they want our attention: knocking breakable objects off shelves, headbutting us, biting our ankles. Often, this behavior is annoying, but other times, it’s downright delightful. (It depends on your mood.)

Charles Dickens, one of history’s great cat-lovers, was supposedly so amused when one of his cats continually put out a candle with his paw in a bid for Dickens’ attention that after the cat died, Dickens had the beloved cat’s paw preserved via taxidermy and turned into a letter-opener. It was a different time, certainly — in Victorian England, it was common to turn animals into functional objects after they died — but the creepy gesture speaks to the great affection Dickens had for his little mischief-maker.