I suppose that’s true of most of us. There’s a limit to how long one can stare into the abyss before craving something warm and familiar — a cat’s purring presence on the windowsill, the shuffle of paws across the floor. Eliot, for all his pretentious leanings and somber verse, had a clear fondness for cats. I imagine him, perched in some London flat, spinning yarns about Macavity, Rum Tum Tugger, and Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat. There’s such joy in those poems — a reminder that even the most serious mind needs space to play.
It’s strange to think of Eliot — that angular man with his pince-nez and measured tone — sitting down to write about mischievous felines. Yet there’s something distinctly Midwestern about Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, a touch of that dry humor I’ve often noticed in people from St. Louis. Perhaps it’s the way Eliot gives each cat such dignity — their aloofness, their quirks, their moments of grandeur — all painted with affection rather than mockery.
St. Louis is like that too — a city that carries itself with quiet pride, unbothered by those who overlook its significance. Maybe Eliot’s Missouri roots never fully left him. For all the fog of London and the rigid intellect of his poetry, I imagine there’s a part of Eliot that still remembered the hum of cicadas in the summer air, the wide arc of the Mississippi carving its way through the city. Maybe that’s why he let his pen wander into such playful territory — to recapture something simple and true, a reminder that life isn’t always measured in broken images and barren landscapes.
I think I’ll read Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats first. St. Louis has a way of encouraging such detours — a reminder that sometimes, in the midst of our own personal Waste Land, we need to let ourselves laugh at a cat named Bustopher Jones.