JUBILATE
An Homage to Cherie
Edited and arranged by Robert Friedman
My beloved cat Cherie came into our lives shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 at a time when a malaise had settled upon many of us; a shocking, demoralizing, and tragic start of a fall term at Princeton, ordinarily so infused with enthusiasm and energy. Like so many others my husband Raymond Smith and I were feeling unmoored, unsure of the future (and of the worth of writing and bringing out a literary magazine at such a time); we felt helpless to make much of a difference in the world, but it occurred to us that we could—at least!—rescue an abandoned animal and bring it home with us.
My philosophy about rescue animals has always been: it isn’t what an adoption does for us, but what it might mean to the rescued animal.
That is, if you are suffused with grief, adopt an animal for the animal’s sake—not your own. (Though of course, you will be bringing happiness, or at least the possibility of happiness, into your own life.)
We drove to the Hopewell Animal Rescue intending to bring home a kitten, since our most recent (beautiful, Persian-calico) cat Christabel had died (in fact, early in the morning of horrific September 11), but as soon as we stepped into the room, confronted with rows of cats and kittens in cages, our attention was drawn to a youngish gray cat, not a kitten, who mewed at us insistently, standing in her cage and staring directly at us with tawny-glaring eyes.
No choice!—we were drawn to Cherie, strong-willed from the start, brought her home with us that very day. I could not know that this slender gray cat with white markings and a freckle on her nose and a distinctive mew! would be my constant household companion for the next eighteen years, and that these eighteen years would include an unexpected tragedy of my own, during which time Cherie would be a great solace.
Cherie was a long-haired “smoke” calico; not an aristocrat among cats, but possessed of a distinctly strong, even impervious personality. From the start she was inclined toward mischief and misrule; she resisted any sort of discipline, and did not like to be told what to do; she was of an age when cats in this area (rural Hopewell township) were still allowed to prowl outdoors, and she proved herself a dismayingly prolific huntress, until the final months of her life in early 2019.
Though Cherie spent much of her time both waking and sleeping on or near my desk, she was largely oblivious of the writing life, if not disdainful; she had no awareness of, nor indeed interest in, the fact that she was the heroine of two books for children which were written at two very different times in her human’s life.
The first, “Naughty Cherie!,” with illustrations by Mark Graham, was published in 2008; the second, “The New Kitten,” with illustrations by Dave Mottram, was published in 2019.
In the first book Cherie is a kitten, reckless and destructive, but also sweet and loving; in the second, Cherie is a spoiled older cat who is astonished and jealous when a new kitten, a sleek beautiful Bengal named Cleopatra, is adopted by her human family and seems to be winning the hearts and love of the family, which Cherie had naturally assumed to belong to her exclusively.
It’s to be noted that, though my adult fiction does not inevitably move toward “happy” endings, my books for children and young adults do; specifically, each children’s book ends with a little girl-heroine in bed, drifting off to sleep with her companion cat or kitten beside her purring.
Like many children’s writers I envision books for very young children read aloud to children at bedtime, a time for comfort and assurance.
“Jubilate” pays homage to Christopher Smart’s fascinatingly eccentric religious poem "Jubilate Agno: For I Will Consider My Cat Jeffrey” (1759-1763).
JUBILATE: An Homage in Catterel Verse
Joyce Carol Oates
For I will consider my Cat Cherie
for she is the very apotheosis of Cat-Beauty
which is to say, nothing extraordinary
for in the Cat, beauty is ordinary
like the bliss
conferred
upon us
in the hypnosis
of purr-
ing.
She has been known
to knead her claws
upon a sleeve.
And on a knee.
And on bare skin,
sharp claws sinking in—
just a warning.
For she is of the tribe of Tyger
and eyes burning bright
though cuddling
at night
until you wake to discover—
where is she? Cher-ie?
Don’t inquire.
For in considering my Cat Cherie
I am considering Catitude—
each Cat the (essential)
equivalent of all others
not varying freak-
“catterel”—an elevated variant of “doggerel”
ishly in size
(like crude D*gs)
but pleas-
ingly Platonic.
Cat-chutzpah
is the “sheathed
claw”—
no heart borne
upon a foreleg,
but
your challenge
to decode,
like poetry
of a subtlety
that does not bark
its meaning
but forces us to
be just a little
smarter than
we are.
(Unlike D*gs
whose un-
critical adulation
makes us
dumber.)
Of Twitter it is estimated
somewhere beyond thirty-one percent
who tweet are feline,
in nocturnal prowl
slyly retweeting
their kind,
reproducing,
replicating
the dark rapacious ever-
fecund feral-soul
that is the sea
upon which “civilization”
floats, uneasily.
For such eloquent Kitty-Twitter,
only the most elegant Kitty-Litter.
But if you ask—Cherie, what
is this? the reply is
blank blinking innocence.
Mew? What’s with you?
— “Live free
or die”—is the Cat’s
very soul, that
makes of us,
by contrast,
fawning and obsequious
beings (not unlike
D*gs). Such beauty
instructs us in its own
perfection
for it is beyond
mere “use”—no work-
cats, watch-cats,
plebian beings
but each descended
of gods
as ancient Egypt
honored; and how
like a deity, to sink
teeth into a rat,
a creature that
squeamish
mankind abhors,
while maintaining
purest Cat-
innocence.
Sandpaper tongue,
utter long-
ing.
Cat-love the nudge
of furry-hard head.
But oh, where has she gone?
Kitty-kitty-kitty! She may come
when called
(like the D*g)
but mostly
she will not
for
(unlike the D*g),
she has got
an interior life,
inscrutable,
inaccessible,
un-possessable.
She does not aim
to please, or aim
at all. Her blessing
is a fluke, as readily
withdrawn as given.
Never will she do your bidding.
Never will she falsely flatter,
nor deceive you
that you much matter
beyond the reach
of the hand that pets
and feeds.
Also she has got
much busyness
out-of-doors
by moonlight.
Don’t inquire.
But there she has gone
head-first through
the Plexiglas cat-door
to return with,
dropped on the floor
at my feet,
a small carcass very still.
Oh Cherie, what have you done?
Only the Cat’s gift is freely given.
The Dog in subservience as in chains
has no free will, and so—
Oh Cherie—is this for me?
For I will consider my Cat Cherie
whose tail switches irritably
across these keys
when confronted with prose
found wanting.
For it is irrefutable, the Cat
is the harshest critic of prose, cattedly
rejecting what has been doggedly
written.
This will not do, at all.
This is not it. At all
where the D*g drools
delight with very mediocrity,
in complicity.
Sometimes, the furry Cat-
sprawl
obliterates the typescript
utterly
for you dare not move
a limb, a tail—
even (gingerly)
from the laptop—
at risk
of provoking a hiss—
Mew! Whom’re you touching, you!
If I dare rise
from this desk
prematurely—
if I dare plead
(human) exhaustion—
vehemently
Cherie will dig in her claws
securing my knees
with the cry Mew!
Where d’you think you’re going, you!
Thus hours, days & ages
accumulate in pages
and pages into books
and books into oeuvres.
Purrlific the literary
judgment.
The very best books (it is said)
are not ghost- but cat-written.
Simenon, Colette, John le Carre
not least Hemingway—
Auden, Eliot, Philip K. Dick—
Borges and Burroughs and
Patricia Highsmith—
Jean Cocteau and Henry David Thoreau—
H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe—
(“I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat!”)—
Twain, Bradbury, Raymond Chandler—
Sartre, Sylvia Plath, and—Daniel Handler?—
not least Samuel Johnson—
(“But Hodge shan’t be shot; no, no Hodge
shall not be shot”)—
rapidly retreating into the mists of Time
where Muse is suffused with Mouse
until the two are merged in mystery—
Cat and collaborator.
We had a 25 lb Mainecoon named Edger the Demo-cat. His was the essence of outdoor ferocity (allowing nothing to live in his one acre universe with the possible exception of family raccoon sharing the pine tree which served as ladder for both family raccoon and the Demo-cat to roof-doze their summer nights in comfort.)
Indoors he would play “let’s box” with never a claw unsheathed. Would preen our 16 year old daughter’s hair licking and preening with the artistry
Of a French coiffure.
He would bring her prizes of dead squirrels neatly eviscerated and laid out on the pillow of her bed.
His 50 year’s absence is felt today!
As I read this incredible poem, my two year-old feline companions (who own me well) romped at my feet, and for a moment everything in the world felt right. Thank you!