The Tiger in the HouseThe enormously erudite and unfailingly charming Carl Van Vechten sings the praises of the most enigmatic of human companions in this witty, learned, and unabashedly opinionated book, one of the most enjoyable and wide-ranging of literary reckonings with the animal world. Carl Van Vechten was an esteemed photographer, novelist, and critic, a champion of modernism and the Harlem renaissance. His deepest devotion, however, was to the feline, an animal who, as he writes, “has been a god, a companion of sorceresses at the Witches’ Sabbath, a beast who is royal in Siam, who in Japan is called ‘the tiger who eats from the hand,’ the adored of Mohammed, Laura’s rival with Petrarch, the friend of Richelieu’s idle moments, the favorite of poet and prelates.” All cat haters are here served notice to beware. The Tiger in the Houseis an unparalleled paean to the quirks and qualities of the cat. To it, Van Vechten brings a remarkable expertise in every kind of human endeavor: science, literature, art, history, law, music, and folklore from around the world, not to mention the most important thing of all–his personal experience of his own beloved cats. |
Contents
By Way of Correcting a Popular Prejudice | 5 |
Treating of Traits | 43 |
Ailurophobes and Other CatHaters | 84 |
The Cat and the Occult | 107 |
The Cat in Folklore | 159 |
The Cat and the Law | 188 |
The Cat in the Theatre | 200 |
The Cat in Music | 218 |
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Common terms and phrases
ailurophobic Angora Angora cat animal appeared artist beast beauty Bêtes birds black cat called caresses CARL VAN VECHTEN cat's Catulle Mendès century Champfleury charming chat Chatte claws colour cries death delightful domestic door drawings ears Egyptian English eyes Fanny Elssler favourite Feathers feline fond François Coppée French grace Grandville habit head human Illustrated with photographs instinct Kallikrates kill kitten lady Les Chats lives London look Louis Wain Madame matou mice milk mistress Moncrif mouse mystery nature never night observed once painted Paris paws Persian cats photograph by Harriet play poems poet proverb purr purring puss pussies rats Samuel Butler scratch seems sleep sometimes spit story superstition tabby tail Théophile Gautier thing tiger tion Vechten W. H. Hudson walk washing white cat wild witches writes wrote York