Welcome to Gaia! ::

Cats And Dogs

by H. P. Lovecraft

Written November 23, 1926

Published in Something About Cats and Other Pieces, Arkham House, 1949

Being told of the cat-and-dog fight about to occur in your literary club,
I cannot resist contributing a few Thomastic yowls and sibilants upon my
side of the dispute, though conscious that the word of a venerable
ex-member can scarcely have much weight against the brilliancy of such
still active adherents as may bark upon the other side. Aware of my
ineptitude at argument, a valued correspondent has supplied me with the
records of a similar controversy in the New York Tribune, in which Mr.
Carl van Doran is on my side and Mr. Albert Payson Terhune on that of the
canine tribe. From this I would be glad to plagiarise such data as I need;
but my friend, with genuinely Machiavellian subtlety, has furnished me
with only a part of the feline section whilst submitting the doggish brief
in full. No doubt he imagines that this arrangement, in view of my own
emphatic bias, makes for something like ultimate fairness; but for me it
is exceedingly inconvenient, since it will force me to be more or less
original in several parts of the ensuing remarks.

Between dogs and cats my degree of choice is so great that it would never
occur to me to compare the two. I have no active dislike for dogs, any
more than I have for monkeys, human beings, tradesmen, cows, sheep, or
pterodactyls; but for the cat I have entertained a particular respect and
affection ever since the earliest days of my infancy. In its flawless
grace and superior self-sufficiency I have seen a symbol of the perfect
beauty and bland impersonality of the universe itself, objectively
considered, and in its air of silent mystery there resides for me all the
wonder and fascination of the unknown. The dog appeals to cheap and facile
emotions; the cat to the deepest founts of imagination and cosmic
perception in the human mind. It is no accident that the contemplative
Egyptians, together with such later poetic spirits as Poe, Gautier,
Baudelaire and Swinburne, were all sincere worshippers of the supple
grimalkin.

Naturally, one's preference in the matter of cats and dogs depends wholly
upon one's temperament and point of view. The dog would appear to me to be
the favorite of superficial, sentimental, and emotional people -- people
who feel rather than think, who attach importance to mankind and the
popular conventional emotions of the simple, and who find their greatest
consolation in the fawning and dependent attachments of a gregarious
society. Such people live in a limited world of imagination; accepting
uncritically the values of common folklore, and always preferring to have
their naive beliefs, feelings, and prejudices tickled, rather than to
enjoy a purely aesthetic and philosophic pleasure arising from
discrimination, contemplation, and the recognition of austere, absolute
beauty. This is not to say that the cheaper elements do not also reside in
the average cat-lover's love of cats, but merely to point out that in
ailurophily there exists a basis of true aestheticism which kynophily does
not possess. The real lover of cats is one who demands a clearer
adjustment to the universe than ordinary household platitudes provide; one
who refuses to swallow the sentimental notion that all good people love
dogs, children, and horses while all bad people dislike and are disliked
by such. He is unwilling to set up himself and his cruder feelings as a
measure of universal values, or to allow shallow ethical notions to warp
his judgment. In a word, he had rather admire and respect than effuse and
dote; and does not fall into the fallacy that pointless sociability and
friendliness, or slavering devotion and obedience, constitute anything
intrinsically admirable or exalted. Dog-lovers base their whole case on
these commonplace, servile, and plebeian qualities, and amusingly judge
the intelligence of a pet by its degree of conformity to their own wishes.
Cat-lovers escape this delusion, repudiate the idea that cringing
subservience and sidling companionship to man are supreme merits, and
stand free to worship aristocratic independence, self-respect, and
individual personality joined to extreme grace and beauty as typified by
the cool, lithe, cynical and unconquered lord of the housetops.

Persons of commonplace ideas -- unimaginative worthy burghers who are
satisfied with the daily round of things and who subscribe to the popular
credo of sentimental values -- will always be dog-lovers. To them nothing
will ever be more important than themselves and their own primitive
feelings, and they will never cease to esteem and glorify the
fellow-animal who best typifies these. Such persons are submerged in the
vortex of Oriental idealism and abasement which ruined classic
civilisation in the Dark Ages, and live in a bleak world of abstract
sentimental values wherein the mawkish illusions of meekness, gentleness,
brotherhood, and whining humility are magnified into supreme virtues, and
a whole false ethic and philosophy erected on the timid reactions of the
flexor system of muscles. This heritage, ironically foisted on us when
Roman politics raised the faith of a whipped and broken people to
supremacy in the later empire, has naturally kept a strong hold over the
weak and sentimentally thoughtless; and perhaps reached its culmination in
the insipid nineteenth century, when people were wont to praise dogs
"because they are so human" (as if humanity were any valid standard of
merit!), and honest Edwin Landseer painted hundreds of smug Fidoes and
Carlos and Rovers with all the anthropoid triviality, pettiness, and
"cuteness" of eminent Victorians.

But amidst this chaos of intellectual and emotional groveling a few free
souls have always stood out for the old civilised realities which
mediaevalism eclipsed -- the stern classic loyalty to truth, strength, and
beauty given a clear mind and uncowed spirit to the full-living Western
Aryan confronted by Nature's majesty, loveliness, and aloofness. This is
the virile aesthetic and ethic of the extensor muscles -- the bold,
buoyant, assertive beliefs and preferences of proud, dominant, unbroken
and unterrified conquerors, hunters, and warriors -- and it has small use
for the shams and whimperings of the brotherly, affection-slobbering
peacemaker and cringer and sentimentalist. Beauty and sufficiency -- twin
qualities of the cosmos itself -- are the gods of this unshackled and
pagan type; to the worshipper of such eternal things the supreme virtue
will not be found in lowliness, attachment, obedience, and emotional
messiness. This sort of worshipper will look for that which best embodies
the loveliness of the stars and the worlds and the forests and the seas
and the sunsets, and which best acts out the blandness, lordliness,
accuracy, self-sufficiency, cruelty, independence, and contemptuous and
capricious impersonality of the all governing Nature. Beauty -- coolness
-- aloofness -- philosophic repose -- self-sufficiency -- untamed mastery
-- where else can we find these things incarnated with even half the
perfection and completeness that mark their incarnation in the peerless
and softly gliding cat, which performs its mysterious orbit with the
relentless and obtrusive certainty of a planet in infinity?

That dogs are dear to the unimaginative peasant-burgher whilst cats appeal
to the sensitive poet-aristocrat-philosopher will be clear in a moment
when we reflect on the matter of biological association. Practical
plebeian folk judge a thing only by its immediate touch, taste, and smell;
while more delicate types form their estimates from the linked images and
ideas which the object calls up in their minds. Now when dogs and cats are
considered, the stolid churl sees only the two animals before him, and
bases his favour on their relative capacity to pander to his sloppy,
uniformed ideas of ethics and friendship and flattering subservience. On
the other hand the gentleman and thinker sees each in all its natural
affiliations, and cannot fail to notice that in the great symmetries of
organic life dogs fall in with slovenly wolves and foxes and jackals and
coyotes and dingoes and painted hyaenas, whilst cats walk proudly with the
jungle's lords, and own the haughty lion, the sinuous leopard, the regal
tiger, and the shapely panther and jaguar as their kin. Dogs are the
hieroglyphs of blind emotion, inferiority, servile attachment, and
gregariousness -- the attributes of commonplace, stupidly passionate, and
intellectually and imaginatively underdeveloped men. Cats are the runes of
beauty, invincibility, wonder, pride, freedom, coldness, self-sufficiency,
and dainty individuality -- the qualities of sensitive, enlightened,
mentally developed, pagan, cynical, poetic, philosophic, dispassionate,
reserved, independent, Nietzschean, unbroken, civilised, master-class men.
The dog is a peasant and the cat is a gentleman.

We may, indeed, judge the tone and bias of a civilisation by its relative
attitude toward dogs and cats. The proud Egypt wherein Pharaoh was Pharaoh
and pyramids rose in beauty at the wish of him who dreamed them bowed down
to the cat, and temples were built to its goddess at Bubastis. In imperial
Rome the graceful leopard adorned most homes of quality, lounging in
insolent beauty in the atrium with golden collar and chain; while after
the age of the Antonines the actual cat was imported from Egypt and
cherished as a rare and costly luxury. So much for the dominant and
enlightened peoples. When, however, we come to the groveling Middle Ages
with their superstitions and ecstasies and monasticisms and maunderings
over saints and their relics, we find the cool and impersonal loveliness
of the felidae in very low esteem; and behold a sorry spectacle of hatred
and cruelty shown toward the beautiful little creature whose mousing
virtues alone gained it sufferance amongst the ignorant churls who
resented its self-respecting coolness and feared its cryptical and elusive
independence as something akin to the dark powers of witchcraft. These
boorish slaves of eastern darkness could not tolerate what did not serve
their own cheap emotions and flimsy purposes. They wished a dog to fawn
and hunt and fetch and carry, and had no use for the cat's gift of eternal
disinterested beauty to feed the spirit. One can imagine how they must
have resented p***y's magnificent reposefulness, unhurriedness,
relaxation, and scorn for trivial human aims and concernments. Throw a
stick, and the servile dog wheezes and pants and stumbles to bring it to
you. Do the same before a cat, and he will eye you with coolly polite and
somewhat bored amusement. And just as inferior people prefer the inferior
animal which scampers excitedly because someone else wants something, so
do superior people respect the superior animal which lives its own life
and knows that the puerile stick-throwings of alien bipeds are none of its
business and beneath its notice. The dog barks and begs and tumbles to
amuse you when you crack the whip. That pleases a meekness-loving peasant
who relishes a stimulus to his self importance. The cat, on the other
hand, charms you into playing for its benefit when it wishes to be amused;
making you rush about the room with a paper on a string when it feels like
exercise, but refusing all your attempts to make it play when it is not in
the humour. That is personality and individuality and self-respect -- the
calm mastery of a being whose life is its own and not yours -- and the
superior person recognises and appreciates this because he too is a free
soul whose position is assured, and whose only law is his own heritage and
aesthetic sense. Altogether, we may see that the dog appeals to those
primitive emotional souls whose chief demands on the universe are for
meaningless affection, aimless companionship, and flattering attention and
subservience; whilst the cat reigns among those more contemplative and
imaginative spirits who ask of the universe only the objective sight of
poignant, ethereal beauty and the animate symbolisation of Nature's bland,
relentless, reposeful, unhurried and impersonal order and sufficiency. The
dog gives, but the cat is.

Simple folk always overstress the ethical element in life, and it is quite
natural that they should extend it to the realm of their pets.
Accordingly, we hear many inane dicta in favour of dogs on the ground that
they are faithful, whilst cats are treacherous. Now just what does this
really mean? Where are the points of reference? Certainly, the dog has so
little imagination and individuality that it knows no motives but its
master's; but what sophisticated mind can descry a positive virtue in this
stupid abnegation of its birthright? Discrimination must surely award the
palm to the superior cat, which has too much natural dignity to accept any
scheme of things but its own, and which consequently cares not one whit
what any clumsy human thinks or wishes or expects of it. It is not
treacherous, because it has never acknowledged any allegiance to anything
outside its own leisurely wishes; and treachery basically implies a
departure from some covenant explicitly recognised. The cat is a realist,
and no hypocrite. He takes what pleases him when he wants it, and gives no
promises. He never leads you to expect more from him than he gives, and if
you choose to be stupidly Victorian enough to mistake his purrs and
rubbings of self-satisfaction for marks of transient affection toward you,
that is no fault of his. He would not for a moment have you believe that
he wants more of you than food and warmth and shelter and amusement -- and
he is certainly justified in criticising your aesthetic and imaginative
development if you fail to find his grace, beauty, and cheerful decorative
influence an aboundingly sufficient repayment for all you give him. The
cat-lover need not be amazed at another's love for dogs -- indeed, he may
also possess this quality himself; for dogs are often very comely, and as
lovable in a condescending way as a faithful old servant or tenant in the
eyes of a master -- but he cannot help feeling astonished at those who do
not share his love for cats. The cat is such a perfect symbol of beauty
and superiority that it seems scarcely possible for any true aesthete and
civilised cynic to do other than worship it. We call ourselves a dog's
"master" -- but who ever dared call himself the "master" of a cat? We own
a dog -- he is with us as a slave and inferior because we wish him to be.
But we entertain a cat -- he adorns our hearth as a guest, fellow-lodger,
and equal because he wishes to be there. It is no compliment to be the
stupidly idolised master of a dog whose instinct it is to idolise, but it
is a very distinct tribute to be chosen as the friend and confidant of a
philosophic cat who is wholly his own master and could easily choose
another companion if he found such a one more agreeable and interesting. A
trace, I think, of this great truth regarding the higher dignity of the
cat has crept into folklore in the use of the names "cat" and "dog" as
terms of opprobrium. Whilst "cat" has never been applied to any sort of
offender more than the mildly spiteful and innocuously sly female gossip
and commentator, the words "dog" and "cur" have always been linked with
vileness, dishonor, and degradation of the gravest type. In the
crystallisation of this nomenclature there has undoubtedly been present in
the popular mind some dim, half-unconscious realisation that there are
depths of slinking, whining, fawning, and servile ignobility which no kith
of the lion and the leopard could ever attain. The cat may fall low, but
he is always unbroken. He is, like the Nordic among men, one of those who
govern their own lives or die.

We have but to glance analytically at the two animals to see the points
pile up in favour of the cat. Beauty, which is probably the only thing of
any basic significance in all the cosmos, ought to be our chief criterion;
and here the cat excels so brilliantly that all comparisons collapse. Some
dogs, it is true, have beauty in a very ample degree; but even the highest
level of canine beauty falls far below the feline average. The cat is
classic whilst the dog is Gothic -- nowhere in the animal world can we
discover such really Hellenic perfection of form, with anatomy adapted to
function, as in the felidae. Puss is a Doric temple -- an Ionic colonnade
-- in the utter classicism of its structural and decorative harmonies. And
this is just as true kinetically as statically, for art has no parallel
for the bewitching grace of the cat's slightest motion. The sheer, perfect
aestheticism of kitty's lazy stretchings, industrious face-washings,
playful rollings, and little involuntary shiftings in sleep is something
as keen and vital as the best pastoral poetry or genre painting; whilst
the unerring accuracy of his leaping and springing, running and hunting,
has an art-value just as high in a more spirited way but it is his
capacity for leisure and repose which makes the cat preeminent. Mr. Carl
Van Vechten, in "Peter Whiffle," holds up the timeless restfulness of the
cat as a model for life's philosophy, and Prof. William Lyon Phelps has
very effectively captured the secret of felinity when he says that the cat
does not merely lie down, but "pours his body out on the floor like a
glass of water". What other creature has thus merged the aestheticism of
mechanics and hydraulics? Contrast this with the inept panting, wheezing,
fumbling, drooling, scratching, and general clumsiness of the average dog
with his false and wasted motions. And in the details of neatness the
fastidious cat is of course immeasurably ahead. We always love to touch a
cat, but only the insensitive can uniformly welcome the frantic and humid
nuzzlings and pawings of a dusty and perhaps not inodorous canine which
leaps and fusses and writhes about in awkward feverishness for no
particular reason save that blind nerve-centres have been spurred by
certain meaningless stimuli. There is a wearying excess of bad manners in
all this doggish fury -- well-bred people don't paw and maul one, and
surely enough we invariably find the cat gentle and reserved in his
advances, and delicate even when he glides gracefully into your lap with
cultivated purrs, or leaps whimsical on the table where you are writing to
play with your pen in modulated, seriocomic pats. I do not wonder that
Mahomet, that sheik of perfect manners, loved cats for their urbanity and
disliked dogs for their boorishness; or that cats are the favorites in the
polite Latin countries whilst dogs take the lead in heavy, practical, and
beer-drinking Central Europe. Watch a cat eat, and then watch a dog. The
one is held in check by an inherent and inescapable daintiness, and lends
a kind of grace to one of the most ungraceful of all processes. The dog,
on the other hand, is wholly repulsive in his bestial and insatiate
greediness; living up to his forest kinship of "wolfing" most openly and
unashamedly. Returning to beauty of line -- is it not significant that
while many normal breeds of dogs are conspicuously and admittedly ugly, no
healthy and well-developed feline of any species whatsoever is other than
beautiful? There are, of course, many ugly cats; but these are always
individual cases of mongrelism, malnutrition, deformity, or injury. No
breed of cats in its proper condition can by any stretch of the
imagination be thought of as even slightly ungraceful -- a record against
which must be pitted the depressing spectacle of impossibly flattened
bulldogs, grotesquely elongated dachshunds, hideously shapeless and shaggy
Airedales, and the like. Of course, it may be said that no aesthetic
standard is other than relative -- but we always work with such standards
as we empirically have, and in comparing cats and dogs under the Western
European aesthetic we cannot be unfair to either. If any undiscovered
tribe in Tibet finds Airedales beautiful and Persian cats ugly, we will
not dispute them on their own territory -- but just now we are dealing
with ourselves and our territory, and here the verdict would not admit of
much doubt even from the most ardent kynophile. Such an one usually passes
the problem off in an epigrammatic paradox, and says that "Snookums is so
homely, he's pretty!" This is the childish penchant for the grotesque and
tawdrily "cute" which we see likewise embodied in popular cartoons, freak
dolls, and all the malformed decorative trumpery of the "Billikin" or
"Krazy Kat" order found in the "dens" and "cosy corners" of the
would-be-sophisticated yokelry.

In the matter of intelligence we find the caninites making amusing claims
-- amusing because they so naively measure what they conceive to be an
animal's intelligence by its degree of subservience to the human will. A
dog will retrieve, a cat will not; therefore (sic!) the dog is the more
intelligent. Dogs can be more elaborately trained for the circus and
vaudeville acts than cats, therefore (O Zeus, O Royal Mount!) they are
cerebrally superior. Now of course this is all the sheerest nonsense. We
would not call a weak-spirited man more intelligent than an independent
citizen because we can make him vote as we wish whereas we can't influence
the independent citizen, yet countless persons apply an exactly parallel
argument in appraising the grey matter of dogs and cats. Competition in
servility is something to which no self-respecting Thomas or Tabitha ever
stooped, and it is plain that any really effective estimate of canine and
feline intelligence must proceed from a careful observation of dogs and
cats in a detached state -- uninfluenced by human beings -- as they
formulate certain objectives of their own and use their own mental
equipment in achieving them. When we do this, we arrive at a very
wholesome respect for our purring hearthside friend who makes so little
display about his wishes and business methods; for in every conception and
calculation he shows a steel-cold and deliberate union of intellect, will,
and sense of proportion which puts utterly to shame the emotional
sloppings-over and docilely acquired artificial tricks of the "clever" and
"faithful" pointer or sheep-dog. Watch a cat decide to move through a
door, and see how patiently he waits for his opportunity, never losing
sight of his purpose even when he finds it expedient to feign other
interests in the interim. Watch him in the thick of the chase, and compare
his calculating patience and quiet study of his terrain with the noisy
floundering and pawing of his canine rival. It is not often that he
returns empty-handed. He knows what he wants, and means to get it in the
most effective way, even at the sacrifice of time -- which he
philosophically recognises as unimportant in the aimless cosmos. There is
no turning him aside or distracting his attention -- and we know that
among humans this is the quality of mental tenacity, this ability to carry
a single thread through complex distractions, is considered a pretty good
sign of intellectual vigour and maturity. Children, old crones, peasants,
and dogs ramble, cats and philosophers stick to their point. In
resourcefulness, too, the cat attests his superiority. Dogs can be well
trained to do a single thing, but psychologists tell us that these
responses to an automatic memory instilled from outside are of little
worth as indices of real intelligence. To judge the abstract development
of a brain, confront it with new and unfamiliar conditions and see how
well its own strength enables it to achieve its object by sheer reasoning
without blazed trails. Here the cats can silently devise a dozen
mysterious and successful alternatives whilst poor Fido is barking in
bewilderment and wondering what it is all about. Granted that Rover the
retriever may make a greater bid for popular sentimental regard by going
into the burning house and saving the baby in traditional cinema fashion,
it remains a fact that whiskered and purring Nig is a higher-grade
biological organism -- something physiologically and psychologically
nearer a man because of his very freedom from man's orders, and as such
entitled to a higher respect from those who judge by purely philosophic
and aesthetic standards. We can respect a cat as we cannot respect a dog,
no matter which personally appeals the more to our mere doting fancy; and
if we be aesthetes and analysts rather than commonplace-lovers and
emotionalists, the scales must inevitably turn completely in kitty's
favour.

It may be added, moreover, that even the aloof and sufficient cat is by no
means devoid of sentimental appeal. Once we get rid of the uncivilised
ethical bias -- the "treacherous" and "horrid bird-catcher" prejudice --
we find in the "harmless cat" the very apex of happy domestic symbolism;
whilst small kittens become objects to adore, idealise, and celebrate in
the most rhapsodic of dactyls and anapaests, iambics and trochaics. I, in
my own senescent mellowness, confess to an inordinate and wholly
unphilosophic predilection for tiny coal-black kittens with large yellow
eyes, and could no more pass one without petting him than Dr. Johnson
could pass a sidewalk post without striking it. There is, likewise, in
many cats quite analogous to the reciprocal fondness so loudly extolled in
dogs, human beings, horses, and the like. Cats come to associate certain
persons with acts continuously contributing to their pleasure, and acquire
for them a recognition and attachment which manifests itself in pleasant
excitement at their approach -- whether or not bearing food and drink --
and a certain pensiveness at their protracted absence. A cat with whom I
was on intimate terms reached the point of accepting food from no hand but
one, and would actually go hungry rather than touch the least morsel from
a kindly neighbour source. He also had distinct affections amongst the
other cats of that idyllic household; voluntarily offering food to one of
his whiskered friends, whilst disputing most savagely the least glance
which his coal-black rival "Snowball" would bestow upon his plate. If it
be argued that these feline fondnesses are essentially "selfish" and
"practical" in their ultimate composition, let us inquire in return how
many human fondnesses, apart from those springing directly upon primitive
brute instinct, have any other basis. After the returning board has
brought in the grand total of zero we shall be better able to refrain from
ingenuous censure of the "selfish" cat.

The superior imaginative inner life of the cat, resulting in superior
self-possession, is well known. A dog is a pitiful thing, depending wholly
on companionship, and utterly lost except in packs or by the side of his
master. Leave him alone and he does not know what to do except bark and
howl and trot about till sheer exhaustion forces him to sleep. A cat,
however, is never without the potentialities of contentment. Like a
superior man, he knows how to be alone and happy. Once he looks about and
finds no one to amuse him, he settles down to the task of amusing himself;
and no one really knows cats without having occasionally peeked stealthily
at some lively and well-balanced kitten which believes itself to be alone.
Only after such a glimpse of unaffected tail-chasing grace and unstudied
purring can one fully understand the charm of those lines which Coleridge
wrote with reference to the human rather than the feline young -- page
eleven

".... a limber elf,
Singing, dancing to itself."

But whole volumes could be written on the playing of cats, since the
varieties and aesthetic aspects of such sportiveness are infinite. Be it
sufficient to say that in such pastimes cats have exhibited traits and
actions which psychologists authentically declare to be motivated by
genuine humour and whimsicality in its purest sense; so that the task of
"making a cat laugh" may not be so impossible a thing even outside the
borders of Cheshire. In short, a dog is an incomplete thing. Like an
inferior man, he needs emotional stimuli from outside, and must set
something artificial up as a god and motive. The cat, however, is perfect
in himself. Like the human philosopher, he is a self-sufficient entity and
microcosm. He is a real and integrated being because he thinks and feels
himself to be such, whereas the dog can conceive of himself only in
relation to something else. Whip a dog and he licks your hand - frauth!
The beast has no idea of himself except as an inferior part of an organism
whereof you are the superior part -- he would no more think of striking
back at you than you would think of pounding your own head when it
punishes you with a headache. But whip a cat and watch it glare and move
backward hissing in outraged dignity and self-respect! One more blow, and
it strikes you in return; for it is a gentleman and your equal, and will
accept no infringement on its personality and body of privileges. It is
only in your house anyway because it wishes to be, or perhaps even as a
condescending favour to yourself. It is the house, not you, it likes; for
philosophers realise that human beings are at best only minor adjuncts to
scenery. Go one step too far, and it leaves you altogether. You have
mistaken your relationship to it and imagined you are its master, and no
real cat can tolerate that breach of good manners. Henceforward it will
seek companions of greater discrimination and clearer perspective. Let
anaemic persons who believe in "turning the other cheek" console
themselves with cringing dogs -- for the robust pagan with the blood of
Nordic twilights in his veins there is no beast like the cat; intrepid
steed of Freya, who can boldly look even Thor and Odin full in the face
and stare with great round eyes of undimmed yellow or green.

In these observations I believe I have outlined with some fullness the
diverse reasons why, in my opinion and in the smartly timed title-phrase
of Mr. Van Doren, "gentlemen prefer cats." The reply of Mr. Terhune in a
subsequent issue of the Tribune appears to me beside the point; insomuch
as it is less a refutation of facts than a mere personal affirmation of
the author's membership in that conventional "very human" majority who
take affection and companionship seriously, enjoy being important to
something alive, hate a "parasite" on mere ethical ground without
consulting the right of beauty to exist for its own sake, and therefore
love man's noblest and most faithful friend, the perennial dog. I suppose
Mr. Terhune loves horses and babies also, for the three go conventionally
together in the great hundred-per-center's credo as highly essential
likings for every good and lovable he-man of the Arrow Collar and Harold
Bell Wright hero school, even though the automobile and Margaret Sanger
have done much to reduce the last two items.

Dogs, then, are peasants and the pets of peasants, cats are gentlemen and
the pets of gentlemen. The dog is for him who places crude feeling and
outgrown ethic and humanocentricity above austere and disinterested
beauty; who just loves "folks and folksiness" and doesn't mind sloppy
clumsiness if only something will truly care for him. (Tableau of dog
across master's grave -- cf. Lanseer, "The Old Shepherd's Chief Mourner.")
The guy who isn't much for highbrow stuff, but is always on the square and
don't (sic) often find the Saddypost or the N.Y. World too deep for him;
who hadn't much use for Valentino, but thinks Doug Fairbanks is just about
right for an evening's entertainment. Wholesome -- constructive --
non-morbid -- civic-minded -- domestic -- (I forgot to mention the radio)
normal -- that's the sort of go-getter that ought to go in for dogs.

The cat is for the aristocrat -- whether by birth or inclinations or both
- who admires his fellow-aristocrats. He is for the man who appreciates
beauty as the one living force in a blind and purposeless universe, and
who worships that beauty in all its forms without regard for the
sentimental and ethical illusions of the moment. For the man who knows the
hollowness of feeling and the emptiness of human objects and aspirations,
and who therefore clings solely to what is real -- as beauty is real
because it pretends to a significance beyond the emotion which it excites
and is. For the man who feels sufficient in the cosmos, and asks no
scruples of conventional prejudice, but loves repose and strength and
freedom and luxury and sufficiency and contemplation; who as a strong
fearless soul wishes something to respect instead of something to lick his
face and accept his alternate blows and strokings; who seeks a proud and
beautiful equal in the peerage of individualism rather than a cowed and
cringing satellite in the hierarchy of fear, subservience, and devolution.
The cat is not for the brisk, self-important little worker with a mission,
but for the enlightened dreaming poet who knows that the world contains
nothing really worth doing. The dilettante -- the connoisseur -- the
decadent, if you will, though in a healthier age than this there were
things for such men to do, so that they were the planners and leader of
those glorious pagan times. The cat is for him who does things not for
empty duty but for power, pleasure, splendour, romance, and glamour -- for
the harpist who sings alone in the night of old battles, or the warrior
who goes out to fight such battles for beauty, glory, fame and the
splendour of a land athwart which no shadow of weakness falls. For him who
will be lulled by no sops of prose and usefulness, but demands for his
comfort the ease and beauty and ascendancy and cultivation which make
effort worth while. For the man who knows that play, not work, and
leisure, not bustle, are the great things of life; and that the round of
striving merely in order to strive some more is a bitter irony of which
the civilised soul accepts as little as it can.

Beauty, sufficiency, ease, and good manners -- what more can civilisation
require? We have them all in the divine monarch who lounges gloriously on
his silken cushion before the hearth. Loveliness and joy for their own
sake -- pride and harmony and coordination -- spirit, restfulness and
completeness -- all here are present, and need but a sympathetic
disillusionment for worship in full measure. What fully civilised soul but
would eagerly serve as high priest of Bast? The star of the cat, I think,
is just now in the ascendant, as we emerge little by little from the
dreams of ethics and conformity which clouded the nineteenth century and
raised the grubbing and unlovely dog to the pinnacle of sentimental
regard. Whether a renaissance of power and beauty will restore our Western
civilisation, or whether the forces of disintegration are already too
powerful for any hand to check, none may yet say, but in the present
moment of cynical world-unmasking between the pretence of the
eighteen-hundreds and the ominous mystery of the decades ahead we have at
least a flash of the old pagan perspective and the old pagan clearness and
honesty.

And one idol lit up by that flash, seen fair and lovely on a dream-throne
of silk and gold under a chryselephantine dome, is a shape of deathless
grace not always given its due among groping mortals -- the haughty, the
unconquered, the mysterious, the luxurious, the Babylonian, the
impersonal, the eternal companion of superiority and art -- the type of
perfect beauty and the brother of poetry -- the bland, grave, compliant,
and patrician cat.