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Curious Chapbooks & Hysterical Histories |
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Cattarina Edgar Allan Poe once belonged to a house cat. Her name was Cattarina. Cattarina lived with the poet, his wife Virginia, and her mother Maria Clemm in snug little houses both in Philadelphia and in New York. The Poe household was so close that none stood on ceremony. The great poet was Eddie, Mrs. Poe was Sissy, and Mrs. Clemm was Muddy. Even Cattarina had nicknames; sometimes she was called Callers, sometimes Kate. Sometimes Cattarina spelt her name with one T, and sometimes with two. That comes from living in a literary household. Sometimes Eddie signed his name E. A. Poe, sometimes Edgar Poe, once as Edgar Perry, as well as Edgar Allan Poe. No one knows when Cattarina first became a member of the Poe family. The great Poe scholar Hervey Allen places Cattarina with the Poes either late in 1839 or early 1840 when the family moved to Coates Street in Philadelphia and "Catarina, the cat, then in her burgeoning kittenhood, purred on the ample plateau of Mrs. Clemm's lap" (371). There are clues in Poe's own writing to suggest that he was a cat owner as early as 1840. In "The Business Man" the man of business comments, "My eighth and last speculation has been in the Cat-Growing way. I have found this a most pleasant and lucrative business, and, really, no trouble at all." Furthermore, in January 1840, Alexander's Weekly Messenger published Poe's essay "Instinct vs. Reason -- A Black Cat." In it Poe argues that animal instinct may be a more powerful force than human intellect. He explains: "Instinct, so far from being an inferior reason, is perhaps the most exacted intellect of all. It will appear to the true philosopher as the divine mind itself acting immediately upon its creatures" (The Unknown Poe, 65). The author's prime example is his own pet and her method of opening a door latch. He explains: But puss is in the daily habit of opening the door, which she accomplishes in the following way. She first springs from the ground to the guard of the latch (which resembles the guard over a gun trigger) and through this she thrusts her left arm to hold on with. She now, with her right hand, presses the thumb latch until it yields and here several attempts are requisite. Having forced it down, however, she seems to be aware that her task is but half accomplished . . . . She, therefore, screws her body round so as to bring her hind feet immediately beneath the latch, while she leaps with all her strength from the door-tile impetus of tile spring [forces] it open. . . (Unknown Foe, 66). Cattarina must have been a very clever and willful cat to have opened the door and to have inspired this essay. One can only wonder what other psychic energy she expended upon her owner besides literary inspiration. "Instinct vs. Reason -- A Black Cat" anticipates by three years Poe's masterpiece of horror "The Black Cat," but there is evidence that Poe is discussing the same creature in both works. In "instinct vs. Reason," Poe comments, "The writer of this article is the owner of one of the most remarkable black cats in the world. . . . and this is saying much; for it will be remembered that black cats are all of them witches." Then, later in "The Black Cat," the drunken narrator confides that "my wife, who at heart was not a little tinctured with superstition, made frequent allusion to the popular notions, which regarded all black cats as witches in disguise." Witch or not, by the time the United States Saturday Post published "The Black Cat" in 1843, Cattarina was already an accepted member of the family. Here is how biographer Frances Winwar imagines the Poe household in January 1842: "There was nothing Mrs. Clemm liked better than to preside over the tea and coffee urns while a fire burned on the hearth, the guests sat in the straight, flower-painted chairs, and the new member of the family, a tortoise-shell cat named Catarina (for the pun in the name) basked in the warmth of the fire place" (220). At that time Eddie and Sissy had been married six years. He was thirty-two and she was not yet twenty. It well may be that Cattarina first belonged to Sissy and that she gave the cat to her husband as a gift, just as the drunkard's wife did in "The Black Cat," for the drunkard states, "We had birds, gold fish, a fine dog, rabbits, a small monkey, and a cat. This latter was a remarkably large and beautiful animal, entirely black, and sagacious to an astonishing degree (382). Although this cat, Pluto, was entirely black, as was the cat in "Instinct vs. Reason," Cattarina was not. She has been described as tortoiseshell, which is "generally a mixture of black and orange markings, with the orange markings showing a tabby pattern" ( Jay, 134). Even still, there can be many subtleties in orange and black colors, for the tortoiseshell is a three-colored cat (Morris, 248). In fact, Desmond Morris lists at least twenty-two variant shades of tortoiseshell, including Blue, Chocolate, Smoke, Cinnamon, Ebony, Lilac, Seal, Lynx Point, and Chintz (249). History does not record Cattarina's exact shade of tortoiseshell; however, there is a firsthand glimpse provided by editor George R. Graham, who mentions Cattarina's markings in describing Virginia Poe's bedroom. Graham writes of visit he paid Virginia during her illness in 1848: "She lay on the straw bed, wrapped in her husband's greatcoat, with a large tortoiseshell cat at her bosom. The wonderful cat seemed conscious of her great usefulness"(Memoir, 70). Cattarina was conscious of much going on in her home, but she kept her own counsel while working her secret wiles. So Cattarina was not entirely black, but then neither was the second cat in "The Black Cat." The first cat disappears early in the tale. With tears in his eyes, the drunken narrator makes a noose and hangs his own beautiful black cat, Pluto, because, he admits, "I knew it loved me." Only later does he find the second cat: "It was a black cat -- a very large one -- fully as large as Pluto, and closely resembling him in every respect but one. Pluto had not a white hair upon any portion of his body; but this cat had a large, although indefinite, splotch of white covering nearly the whole region of the breast." Later the drunkard's wife calls his attention "to the mark of white hair," which gradually forms through the drunkard's imagination into the appearance of a noose around the second cat's neck. If Sissy did not give Cattarina to her husband, Eddie might very well have found her the same way the drunkard found this second uncanny cat. Perhaps Edgar Allan Poe met Cattarina on one of his jaunts along Philadelphia's Front Skeet or Lower Dock. The drunkard in "The Black Cat" recalls, One night as I sat, half stupefied in a den of more than infamy, my attention was suddenly drawn to some black object, reposing upon the head of one of the immense hogsheads of Gin, or of Rum, which constituted the chief furniture of the apartment. I had been looking steadily at the top of this hogshead for some minutes, and what now caused me surprise was the fact that I had not sooner perceived the object thereupon. I approached it, and touched it with my hand. . . .when I prepared to go home, the animal evinced a disposition to accompany me. I permitted it to do so; occasionally stooping and lifting it as I proceeded. When it reached the house it domesticated itself at once, and became immediately a great favorite with my wife (384). With Cattarina now in the home, the Poe household was not entirely childless, although Muddy may have considered Eddie and Sissy children enough to take care of already. TO READ THE REST, ORDER "POE'S UNCANNY HOUSE CAT."
POE on the WEB Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site
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