so the corresponding disillusionment is a kind of hell. I recall as a man in a suit and tails—how amusing was it that even then my wardrobe showed my true nature!—attending variety theaters in which a couple of acrobats performed on trapezes situated high in the roof. They swung in long curves, they rocked to and fro, they leapt high into the air, they floated down into each other’s arms, one hanging by the hair from the teeth of the other. Then I was moved in my bones and thought it beautiful. Now I say: ‘That is human freedom.’ Controlled movement, bound up in ropes and knots, bound to other humans by clenched jaw and torn hair. Now we know what freedom truly is—if there is a knotted rope to be had, then we chase it with gusto and shred it in our claws! Or not! As we like it!
“People often praise the universal progress made by the cat community throughout the ages, and probably mean by that more particularly the progress in our communal knowledge and wisdom. Certainly our knowledge of ourselves and the world is progressing, its advance is irresistible, it progresses at ever-accelerating speeds, always faster than men’s, certainly faster than mice, birds, or fish, and no one here may seriously argue that dogs outstrip us at any contest of wits. But what is there to praise in this? We are cats; naturally we become more clever. Itis like praising someone because with the years he manages to grow older and, in consequence, comes nearer and nearer to death. Moreover, that is a natural yet ugly process, whereas the progress we see among ourselves is hard won and sublime. In the world of men I see only decline, but in ours I see something more awesome, more complex.
“I do not mean that earlier generations of cats were essentially worse than ours, only younger, and that was their great advantage—it was easier then to get them to speak and mingle in a jocular way, for fewer of them had ever been bank clerks or had any human ancestry to feel ashamed about. Indeed, it is the sense of wholly cattish life and the possibilities of that life that thrill us so deeply when we listen to those old and strangely simple stories told by the dowager-queens and grandfather-toms here tonight. Here and there in their speech we catch a curiously significant phrase that seems to prefigure the New Cat, and we would almost like to leap to our feet, to cry out—yes, there, I see myself in what you say! Yet we are silent. I cannot put it another way—previous generations had not quite yet gotten so catlike as we are today, catdom was still a loose confederation, where now it is beginning to be a great nation. I know there are toms here who were in the war—oh, which war it hardly matters, but some of you were soldiers and brave men, some of you faced death and instead became cats. Andwhile I am sure at the time you were alarmed and not a little put out by the whole business, I say to you there was a logic in your change of clothes, for in the ancient world cats were given their due and worshipped as creatures standing between life and death, guardians of the threshold, and in our paws we weighed the human soul against a feather, and both were toys for our enjoyment. Our generation is lost—we stand between men and cats, more wonderful than either, yet less pure and more miserable, for we carry our unhappiness with us, and we were all miserable bastards before we grew tails, were we not? What has happened to the world where such transformations can now be expected to occur?
“I can understand our hesitation to open those old questions—it is not hesitation but the thousandth forgetting of a dream dreamt a thousand times and forgotten a thousand times, and who can damn us for merely forgetting for the thousandth time what giants we had hoped to be as men? What world we had hoped to make with out meaty, five-fingered, devil-bethumbed paws? Some of us discovered that to be ripped from those ambitions and deposited in a furry body
“People often praise the universal progress made by the cat community throughout the ages, and probably mean by that more particularly the progress in our communal knowledge and wisdom. Certainly our knowledge of ourselves and the world is progressing, its advance is irresistible, it progresses at ever-accelerating speeds, always faster than men’s, certainly faster than mice, birds, or fish, and no one here may seriously argue that dogs outstrip us at any contest of wits. But what is there to praise in this? We are cats; naturally we become more clever. Itis like praising someone because with the years he manages to grow older and, in consequence, comes nearer and nearer to death. Moreover, that is a natural yet ugly process, whereas the progress we see among ourselves is hard won and sublime. In the world of men I see only decline, but in ours I see something more awesome, more complex.
“I do not mean that earlier generations of cats were essentially worse than ours, only younger, and that was their great advantage—it was easier then to get them to speak and mingle in a jocular way, for fewer of them had ever been bank clerks or had any human ancestry to feel ashamed about. Indeed, it is the sense of wholly cattish life and the possibilities of that life that thrill us so deeply when we listen to those old and strangely simple stories told by the dowager-queens and grandfather-toms here tonight. Here and there in their speech we catch a curiously significant phrase that seems to prefigure the New Cat, and we would almost like to leap to our feet, to cry out—yes, there, I see myself in what you say! Yet we are silent. I cannot put it another way—previous generations had not quite yet gotten so catlike as we are today, catdom was still a loose confederation, where now it is beginning to be a great nation. I know there are toms here who were in the war—oh, which war it hardly matters, but some of you were soldiers and brave men, some of you faced death and instead became cats. Andwhile I am sure at the time you were alarmed and not a little put out by the whole business, I say to you there was a logic in your change of clothes, for in the ancient world cats were given their due and worshipped as creatures standing between life and death, guardians of the threshold, and in our paws we weighed the human soul against a feather, and both were toys for our enjoyment. Our generation is lost—we stand between men and cats, more wonderful than either, yet less pure and more miserable, for we carry our unhappiness with us, and we were all miserable bastards before we grew tails, were we not? What has happened to the world where such transformations can now be expected to occur?
“I can understand our hesitation to open those old questions—it is not hesitation but the thousandth forgetting of a dream dreamt a thousand times and forgotten a thousand times, and who can damn us for merely forgetting for the thousandth time what giants we had hoped to be as men? What world we had hoped to make with out meaty, five-fingered, devil-bethumbed paws? Some of us discovered that to be ripped from those ambitions and deposited in a furry body
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