Jubilate: Homage to Cherie

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 and her human

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.

Naughty Cherie climbing the curtains

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.

Spoiled Cherie confronting her new rival

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.                   

---

Writers whose books were not ghost-but cat-written

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.

---

Credit: “Jubilate” originally appeared in the New Yorker online, and has been reprinted in “American Melancholy: New Poems."