I found myself reading part of Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett’s account of the first year of her cat Mackerel’s life while I was sitting with Hector, my Norwegian Forest cat (I’ve always been delighted by the fact that Jan Morris also had one of these noble specimens). Hector, a stray who came in from the cold and who turned out to be female, is now blind, and we supervise her meals lest her two housemates, Zsa Zsa, a black and white made cantankerous by juvenile arthritis, and Kiki the kitten, a boisterous and daftly loving tabby, try to edge her out of her dinner. As she finished, I lifted my head from the book and apologised to her for not being more chatty while she ate. Then I kissed her gently on the head. It is this kind of behaviour that The Year of the Cat seeks to analyse and understand: not only the emotional care cat owners often find themselves lavishing on these supremely unknowable little animals, but the reactions to our reactions, especially when they are pejorative.
“Cat lady” is one such charge, sometimes with the intensifier “crazy”, although it was my husband who wept for days when Hector lost her sight, for fear that she would be frightened and confused (she has proved wonderfully adaptable). Women who love their cats inordinately are said to be compensating – most usually for lack of sex or children – and projecting on to them an intimacy they are unable to experience elsewhere.
