Great writers and the cats who owned them by Susannah Fullerton: Charles Dickens and his furry, feline letter opener

Cats and writers are spiritual soulmates. That, at least, is the opinion of Susannah Fullerton, who has rounded up stories about well-known scribes and their furry companions.

In this entertaining book, you will meet all those Siamese, Persians and workaday tabbies who insist on walking across keyboards, sitting on top of manuscripts and greeting each new book their owner produces with a suspicious sniff, as if to say they could probably have done better themselves, if only they had the time.

Take Bob, the moggie who used to get so cross with his master Charles Dickens for reading late into the night that he repeatedly snuffed out the candle with his paw. When Bob eventually died, Dickens had that paw made into the furry handle of a paperknife, so that every time the author of David Copperfield opened one of his many letters, he remembered his departed feline friend. (You can still see this gruesome gadget in the New York Public Library.)

Then there is Mark Twain, author of the Huckleberry Finn books, who was so dependent on feline companionship that whenever he was away, he ‘rented’ local kittens to help him feel at home. A genuine animal lover, when Twain quit his temporary digs he left money to ensure that the hired-for-the-holidays cats would be looked after for life.

Or what about Edward Lear, author of The Owl And The Pussy-Cat, who was so worried that his elderly cat Foss would get confused by moving house that he insisted on building his new villa on exactly the same plan as the old one.

This kind of exquisite care wasn’t unique to Lear. In the previous century, Dr Johnson, of Dictionary fame, exhibited just such thoughtfulness to his ‘sable’ cat, Hodge.

Hodge loved oysters, which in the 1760s were as cheap as chips. But Johnson worried that if he sent Francis Barber, his servant, to buy his cat’s supper, Barber might feel insulted and take his frustration out on the animal.

So every day, Johnson, by now pretty much the most famous man in England, could be seen lumbering off to the market to buy Hodge’s favourite tea-time treat.

Fullerton doesn’t confine herself to moggies of English-speaking writers, telling tales of the Argentinian novelist Jorge Luis Borges, who wrote poems to his felines, and the scandalous French poet Charles Baudelaire, who declared ‘a cat is beautiful; it suggests ideas of luxury, cleanliness, voluptuous pleasures’.

Then there is the Canadian L.M. Montgomery, beloved author of Anne Of Green Gables. She hoped that, when she died, the spirits of all the cats she’d ever loved would greet her ‘with purrs of gladness at the pearly gates’.

All the stories in this book have been told many times before. However, such is their charm that it would feel like bad manners – something you could never accuse a cat of – to make too much of this.

Instead, the best way to enjoy this book is to sink into a comfortable armchair, pour a glass of something delicious, and imagine that there is a soft, furry bundle purring like a tractor on your lap as you reacquaint yourself with Bob, Hodge and all the other feline ‘mews’ who have inspired and consoled our greatest literary minds.