Chad Taylor

On the long tradition of cats

In every life a few cats must fall, so congratulations across a couple of oceans to Diesel and Soya for scoring a good home. In London the cats are out lying on footpaths. On my morning run I stopped twice scratch heads; further along I found a ten pound note. Karma.
'[Cats] provided, she said, "something for writers that humans cannot: companionship that makes no demands or intrusions."'

-- A Life of Patricia Highsmith, Andrew Wilson (Bloomsbury, 2003)

'[My] secretary is a black Persian cat, 14 years old, and I call her that because she has been around me ever since I began to write, usually sitting on the paper I wanted to use or the copy I wanted to revise, sometimes leaning up against the typewriter and sometimes just quietly gazing out of the window from the corner of the desk as if to say, "The stuff you're doing is a waste of time, bud."'

-- Raymond Chandler, Raymond Chandler Speaking, Dorothy Gardiner and Kathrine Sorley Walker Ed. (Hamish Hamilton, 1962)