Cats in Literary Works. International Cat Day: cats in world literature

World literature is unimaginable
yourself without images of cats. About the works
in which they appear or play a major role
cats, you can write more than one dissertation.
Let's remember the famous literary characters -
cats and cats, on International Cat Day March 1!

Cats live on the pages of our first books and cartoons for kids.
And we with early childhood we are convinced of the extraordinary character and intelligence of these
prominent animals.

Many probably remember the tale of Vladimir Grigorievich Suteev "Cat-fisherman", which
he himself illustrated and on which a cartoon was made in 1964. The cat-fisherman turned out to be
incomparably smarter than other animals - a bear, a wolf and even a cunning fox,
and deftly led them all!

And what can we say about the fabulous Puss in Boots! When younger brother got
inherited a cat, the guy was terribly dejected: “Brothers,” he said, “can honestly earn
their own bread, if only they stick together. What will become of me after I
I'll eat my cat and make a muff out of his skin? Just starve to death!" Thank God,
smart Cat escaped the terrible fate of turning into a muff and helped his master find
happiness and wealth.

.

Cats are not only smart, but also unusually kind and peaceful - is there a cuter hero,
than the charming cat Leopold from the series of cartoons written by Arkady Khait (1975-93)? Leopold
with his famous "guys, let's live together!" can be called the feline "Prince Myshkin".

Coming out of infancy, we begin to read stories about animals and get acquainted with
new cat characters, noble, affectionate and beautiful. Such is Yu-yu,
the cat of Alexander Kuprin, about whom he wrote the story of the same name in 1927. About
at the same time, Canadian Ernest Seton-Thompson, author of the famous Animal Tales,
writes one of his best works - "The Slum Cat", in literal translation
"Slum cat". The story is known to the Russian-speaking reader as "Royal
Analostanka. Seton-Thompson illustrated his stories himself.

As you know, from ancient times, cats, especially black ones, were attributed to evil magical
properties, and echoes of this bad reputation of innocent creatures are also reflected in world literature.
A black cat often becomes the hero of mystical works in the "horror" genre. And how is it not
recall the classic story by Edgar Allan Poe "The Black Cat", which tells how the mystical
the cat helped expose the crime of his master, who ended up on the gallows! The story was
written in 1843, and in 1934 it was made into a horror film of the same name.

The story of Guy de Maupassant "Misty" (1884) is perceived as a warning: a lover
lost his eyes, the cat thrown out the window twisted his neck, and all because the animal was jealous
unfortunate lover to his mistress!

One of the most significant works on the theme of the cat - "Worldly views of the cat Murr"
(1819-1821) - a satirical and at the same time very thoughtful novel by the German writer
Romance by Ernest Theodore Amadeus Hoffmann. A novel that combines the funny with the tragic is considered
pinnacle of the writer's work. The book is a confession of the scientist cat Murr, however,
In preparing the work for publication, there was an embarrassment: the cat, outlining his worldly views, vomited on
parts of the first book that fell into his paws from the library of the owner, the brilliant composer Johannes
Kreisler to use the torn pages "part to lay, part to dry."
Kreisler's biography fell under the cat's paws, and due to an oversight, these pages were printed
in parallel with the thoughts of the cat.

About cats wrote not only in Europe. "Notes on a Cat City" - a satirical pamphlet of the Chinese
writer Lao She was published in 1932. The action takes place on Mars, where supposedly exists
a civilization of creatures that look like cats. Cat city is the capital of the state, in
ruled by the Great Miao. Cats helped the writer achieve with the help of a tragicomic
effect of deep social generalizations.

Illustration for "Notes on the Cat City" by Lao She.

Among the most perfect and most accurate cat images- "The cat that walked by itself"
from Rudyard Kipling's tale (1902). Who better than Kipling conveyed the original cat quality -
longing for freedom and independence?

you inexplicably love cats and literature ? Oh, on the face, almost the main signs of a poetic and dreamy intellectual, hovering in the clouds. Interestingly, I often notice that people whose work I admire love the same things that I do, say, cats. Probably, the affinity of souls affects ... Will it coincide with you? The smartest cats are favorites of the best writers in the world!

Writers' cats: Ernest Hemingway, who knew nothing of the measure

The romantic writer was not always an avid cat person. But one day in 1935 close friend Stanley Dexter gave him a kitten with some handicapped. The fact is that on his paws there were 6 fingers. Hemingway was not at all embarrassed, he became attached to the baby almost at first sight and began to love reverently, giving him a completely simple name without a hint of literary pretentiousness - Snowball (ours is Snowball).

And then the soul rushed to heaven - a whole era of cats began in Ernest's life! After 10 years, more than twenty fluffies were under the tutelage of the writer. And today, in the Hemingway House-Museum (which is located in the American town of Key West, California), an immense number of cats live (among them 44 descendants of the first Hemingway kitten - all have six fingers on their paws).

They are carefully looked after by the state. Because the descendants of the animals of the great writer are recognized as a national treasure! Imagine, the cats live there more than freely - they can freely move around the Museum and are never left without attention, because visitors are not transferred there.

Cats in literature: the prototype of the Boy from "Island in the Ocean"

Of course, Hemingway's cats left their mark on literature. One of the pupils became the prototype of the cat Boy from the novel "Island in the Ocean". It was a real cat Uncle Willy, who was overtaken tragic death- He got hit by a car. And the writer had to shoot him to save him from suffering.

To say that Ernest was very homesick for this is an understatement. Once he wrote such sentimental lines: “I miss you very much, Uncle Willie. I've had to shoot people, but never someone I've known and loved for 11 years. Someone who purred with two broken legs."

Writers' cats: sophisticated Taffy with an unrelenting love for felines

Famous among refined lovers of literature, the Russian writer of the Silver Age era Teffi (real name Nadezhda Lokhvitskaya) devoted many different works to cats and mentioned her all-encompassing love for them in more than one interview. And she confirmed it with extravagant actions. For example, on reception to Tsar Romanov (where she was invited as the main and favorite royal family writer of his time) Teffi came with five cats. She could not do without her favorites, because the festivities lasted for five whole days - for such a long time Nadia does not leave her animals.

And once Nadezhda Alexandrovna even mentioned that she divides people into those who love cats and those who don't. So she can’t even imagine the second in the role of her friends.

Cats in literature: four-legged Romeo and Juliet

In the artsy works of Teffi, cats acquired unusual names and worried serious passions. The writer combined a whole cycle of poems into a "cat epic" (author's definition), where the main characters were White Lap and Tiger Cat, whom she compared in the comments with the legendary literary lovers - Tristan and Isolde, Romeo and Juliet.

What kind of cats and in what quantity did Nadezhda have for all her life? long life, is not known for sure. She had to live at a turning point in history, and, fleeing from the new "anti-aristocratic power", the writer emigrated to Paris. Unfortunately, she could not take the cats with her and was very sad about this. But over time, even in difficult "refugee" conditions, she still got a cat. As one of his contemporaries recalls, an important and large cat lived in her tiny apartment on Rue Boissière.

The best cats for Pushkin are overly well-fed

Cats in literature were also noted thanks to the great Russian writer Alexander Pushkin. In his works you can find a lot of them, the most important of which was the mystical scientist cat from Ruslan and Lyudmila.

It has been noted that the poet also liked to make pencil drawings on scraps of paper, in women's albums, and on tablecloths. And every now and then Pushkin sketched various felines. His main "artistic" character is a well-fed cat with a wriggling tail and pricked ears, sitting with his back to us. He seems to be waiting for something excitedly and interestedly.

Celebrity Cats: Mark Twain's minions

Mark Twain is another famous writer, known not only for his work, but also for big love to pets. In his house there was a whole menagerie - squirrels, turtles, dogs and, of course, cats. Moreover, he treated the latter with special reverence. To Twain's statements, for example, belongs such a paradoxical saying: "If it were possible to cross a man with a cat, it would improve the human breed, but would damage the cat."

Twain had more than a dozen felines in his upbringing. But there was also a favorite - a tricolor cat. Moreover, it is even known that she loved to sleep on dining table, which is usually covered with a red tablecloth. Mark did not allow his pet to be driven away, jokingly explaining this to the household by the fact that bright color tablecloths the best way emphasizes the beauty of the "fur coat" of the four-legged.

It's funny that the daughter's own writer was called angry gray cat, because he snorted in anger in a cat-like manner.

Cats in literature: Mark Twain's important characters

As for the cat's footprint in the works of the American writer, there are a great many of them. Moreover, all cats are endowed with important names: General Gallet, General Grant, Prophet Moses, Captain Semms, Margaret, Horace Greeley, etc.

And in the story "Coot Wilson," Mark clearly outlined his attitude towards cats: "They say that without a cat - well-fed, spoiled, accustomed to ideal houses; Perhaps I do not argue, but I have not yet seen proof.

The best cat Edgar Poe

The talented American writer Edagar Allan Poe was the founder of three genres in art - detective, science fiction and thriller. Perhaps unsurprisingly, his favorite was a black cat named Katarina.

Despite the exceptional talent, the Poe family lived in poverty all their lives: his wife had tuberculosis, and Edgar became addicted to alcohol because of this. The cat, it would seem, mystically supported them and comforted them. Inspiring the writer, she sat on his shoulder during work and warmed the sickly Virginia in a cold house.

Cats in literature: Muse with a black mustache

For their family, she was both a guardian angel, as befits a cat, and a Muse. Katarina inspired Poe's short story "The Black Cat", which became a classic horror novella.

Celebrity Cats: Poet Cat

But the most beautiful poet Joseph Brodsky himself associated himself with a cat. His friends even say that he ended phone conversations with a flirtatious "meow." And in the film dedicated to Joseph, called "One and a half cats", the cat plays the role of the alter ego of the poet.

Today they are well known funny names several of the writer's cats - The Cat in White Boots, Big Red, Samson and Mississippi.

Cats in the literature of Joseph Alexandrovich did not leave a special mark. There was only an essay "Cat's Meow".

Video: cat and her man

A wonderful and touching festival video sketch on the topic "cats in literature". This short film aesthetically subtly illustrates a poem about a cat by a talented contemporary poetess.

It's the cats' turn. How many cats did Ernest Hemingway have? What writer thought that real men couldn't love cats? What cat was Joseph Brodsky like? Read more in this article on Lady Mail.Ru.

Six-fingered: the heirs of the great Hemingway

In 1935 with light hand After his friend Stanley Dexter, the American writer Ernest Hemingway became a cat lover: Dexter gave Hemingway an unusual kitten with six toes on each paw. The kid was nicknamed Snowball (Snowball) and opened a whole "era of cats" in the life of the great writer. The cats in Hemingway's house were not translated - ten years later there were already more than 20. Today, the writer's house-museum in Key West (Florida) is home to many cats, including 44 descendants of Snowball, who inherited his six-fingered. A special commission recognized the cat kingdom as a national treasure. Cats roam freely around the museum and enjoy universal respect.

Ernest Hemingway with one of his favorites

The prototype of the cat Boy from the book "Islands in the Ocean" was Hemingway's real cat named Uncle Willie. The cat was hit by a car, and in order to save him from suffering, Hemingway had to shoot the animal. In a letter to his friend, the Venetian aristocrat Gianfranco Ivancic, dated 1953, Hemingway put it this way: “I miss you very much, Uncle Willy. I've had to shoot people, but never someone I've known and loved for 11 years. Someone who purred with two broken legs."

Tigercat and Whitepaw: the burden of human passions

The Russian writer Nadezhda Aleksandrovna Lokhvitskaya, known under the pseudonym Teffi, sincerely did not understand how one could not love cats. "For me man, not cat loving, always suspicious, with a flaw, probably. Defective. Here is even Vera Nikolaevna Bunina - why, it seems, she is kind and sweet, and that she cannot stand cats, she is afraid of them, like a wall between her and me. There can be no closeness, real friendship between us. I always feel her detachment. I sympathize with her with restraint, I recognize all her indisputable qualities. But I can't forgive her cats. People for me are divided into those who love cats and those who do not. A person who doesn't like cats will never be my friend. And vice versa, if he loves cats, I forgive him a lot for this and turn a blind eye to his shortcomings. Here, for example, Khodasevich. He loved cats and even wrote poems about his cat Mura ... ”- memoirist Irina Odoevtseva conveys the words of Teffi.

Taffy sincerely did not understand how you can not love cats

Teffi herself wrote a whole "cat epic", the main characters of which were Tigercat and Whitepaw - cat Tristan and Isolde or Romeo and Juliet.

General Grant and Prophet Moses: more than just cats

Mark Twain was very fond of animals: in his home "animal" there were turtles, squirrels, dogs, cats. He simply adored the latter and treated them with great respect. “If it were possible to cross a man with a cat, it would improve the human breed, but would harm the cat,” the writer sincerely believed. There were dozens of cats in Twain's house, but the favorite was a beautiful tricolor cat who preferred to rest on a round dining table covered with a bright red tablecloth. Mark Twain never chased away his pet, each time explaining to his daughters that the red color emphasizes the beauty of a cat's coat. In his short story “Coot Wilson,” Twain wrote: “It is said that without a cat—fat, spoiled, accustomed to reverence—there are ideal homes; Perhaps I do not argue, but I have not yet seen proof. Many cats “live” in the works of Mark Twain, and most of them do not have nicknames, but worthy names: General Grant, General Gallet, Prophet Moses, Margaret, Captain Semms, Horace Greeley.

Mark Twain with one of his cats

It is interesting that Twain himself, when he happened to get angry ... snorted like a cat. His daughters Susie, Clara and Jean called him “angry gray cat” for this, and in order to see him like that, they deliberately pissed themselves off and shouted in complete delight: “Oh, you nasty angry cat!”

Portly cat: favorite of the great poet

In the works of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin there are a lot of cats and cats, both real and mystical, like the “scientist cat” from the poem “Ruslan and Lyudmila”. The poet was sympathetic to cats and allowed them to leave a mark not only in his own works. Pushkin was great master pencil drawing and cats were his favorites: he drew them in women's albums, on a randomly turned up piece of paper, on the cloth of the card table. Most often, the poet depicted burly cats, sitting with their backs to the viewer, with attentive ears and a wriggling tail, betraying intense expectation or interest in something outside the picture field.

Drawing by Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin

In the album of Elizaveta Nikolaevna Ushakova, Pushkin's drawings "tell" about mutual love the hostess of the album and Sergey Dmitrievich Kiselev, who was nicknamed "Kis" (after the first letters of his surname). Alluding to the love of Elizabeth Nikolaevna, in one drawing Pushkin depicted a girl in the form of a cat lovingly looking after a small but brave-looking military man (S. Kiselev). The whole scene is watched by a portly cat in the poet's favorite pose.

Katarina: black history

The favorite cat of the American writer Edgar Allan Poe, who is considered the founder of three genres in literature at once - thriller, science fiction and detective, was called Katarina. It was she who "inspired" Poe to write the story "The Black Cat", which became a classic horror novel.

The writer had a difficult life: his wife Virginia suffered from tuberculosis, he himself abused alcohol, and they almost never got out of poverty. The cat was theirs faithful companion: she sat on Poe's shoulder when he worked, or snuggled up to Virginia, warming her in the poorly heated house.

Edgar Allan Poe and Katharina

The writer loved his wife very much, but he was constantly tormented by the fear that he would raise his hand against her. Probably this fear came from a sense of guilt caused by the fact that he could not provide for his wife decent life. Even the cat seemed to serve Virginia better than he did. In the story "The Black Cat" Poe gave vent to his fears and complexes. People with weak mentality and unstable nervous system reading is not recommended.

Cat Muka: Bulgakov's "patient"

According to the testimony of the second wife of the writer Lyubov Evgenievna Belozerskaya, the prototype of the Behemoth cat, the character of the novel "The Master and", the werecat and beloved jester Woland served as their domestic cat Fluffy is a huge gray animal. Bulgakov only made the Behemoth black, since it is black cats that are traditionally considered to be associated with evil spirits.

Monument to Koroviev and the Cat Behemoth in Moscow

There were several cats and cats in the Bulgakovs' house. One of them was called Muka, and her first-born - Full House - in honor of the successful production of Bulgakov's play "Zoyka's Apartment". In her memoirs, Lyubov Evgenievna writes: “M.A. never took the cat Muka in his arms - he was too squeamish, but he allowed him to sit on his desk, putting a piece of paper under it. He made an exception before childbirth: the cat came to him, and he massaged her.

Cats: for women only

The stories of the well-known collection Fairy Tales for No Reason were invented by Rudyard Kipling for his children and niece. However, despite the fiction, the "cat that walked by itself" had a real prototype - Siamese cat, presented to Kipling's wife Caroline during their honeymoon trip. This cat liked to leave home at night and wander around wild forest. He returned in the morning as if nothing had happened.

Rudyard Kipling and his famous story about a cat that walked by itself

Kipling himself was indifferent to cats, he loved dogs more, and therefore the end of the famous fairy tale is not surprising: “... and still three Men out of five - if they are real Men - throw different items into a Cat, wherever they see her, and all the Dogs - if they are real Dogs - one and all drive her up a tree.

Marina Tsvetaeva wrote about cats and cats not only in poetry, they surrounded her in life: “A gray fluffy smoky green-eyed cat collapsed on my desk. I shout: “Seryozhenka, come here, look how Athos is sleeping!” A huge cat lies on its back, slightly twisted, paws up, enjoying sleep as soon as cats can. Detached. Selflessly."

Marina Tsvetaeva with her husband Sergei Efron and children - Aley and George

“Cat-like” they addressed each other in the Tsvetaeva family: Marina called her husband Sergei Efron Leo, Leva, he called her Lynx, Lynx, her parents called daughters Ariadne and Irina kittens - this was part of them " family fairy tale". When the son Georgy was born to the couple in 1925, his mother came up with his home “cat” name - Mur.

According to the memoirs of the bibliophile Moses Lesman, Anna Akhmatova could not stand excessive love for animals in people, but she was also unpleasant to have a bad attitude towards them. Akhmatova herself noted the natural grace and beauty of cats, but she had no particular predilection for them. She put up with the presence of animals in the lives of other people and responded with gratitude to the cat's caress. In Akhmatova's poems, there are many "cat" traces, and in her memoirs, neighbor's cats appear every now and then. Akhmatova sends greetings and kisses to them in letters: “I kiss you, Anyuta and all the cats (how many are there)?” Or at the end of another letter: “My dear, it's been a week since I've been at home. Everything is peaceful and safe here. The cats are young and beautiful ... "At the dacha in Komarovo, Akhmatova's neighbors lived a very noisy, violent and huge red cat, nicknamed Gluck, about whom she said:" Well, you know, this is no longer a cat, this is one and a half cats. Anna Akhmatova also believed that this red cat is very similar to Joseph Brodsky.

One and a half cat: everything is like in a movie

Cats occupied a special place in the life of Joseph Brodsky. In the family where he grew up, “cat” words were often used - “meow”, “mur-meow”, “mur-mur-meow” - to express the most different feelings. Even the poet himself often ended phone conversation with relatives and friends, saying: “Meow-meow!” In Brodsky's letters to friends, on books donated by him, there are many drawings depicting cats, made by the poet himself. One of his later essays on poetry is called "Cat's Meow". In Andrei Khrzhanovsky's film One and a Half Cats, dedicated to Joseph Brodsky, the cat is the alter ego of the poet: the most different cats, drawn and alive.

What did Russian writers and poets write in the most important topic in this universe? We recall cats and cats in literature and look at illustrations for books together with Sofia Bagdasarova.

Talking

Firstly, out of competition, cats are magical, talking. Fairy tales have cat Baiyun- by his nickname, you can immediately guess that he knows how to play (talk). He is a storyteller and a bit of a cannibal. His closest relative is Pushkin's scientist cat from the preface to "Ruslan and Lyudmila", which "goes to the right - it starts the song, to the left - it tells fairy tales." The poet picked it up from the fairy tales of Arina Rodionovna.

Kazan cat. Splint. 17th century

Ivan Bilibin. Scientist cat. Frontispiece to "The Tale of the Golden Cockerel" by Alexander Pushkin. 1910

Evgeny Migunov. Illustration for the story of the Strugatsky brothers "Monday begins on Saturday." 1965

Their offspring, of course, - talking cat Vasily with hereditary sclerotic memory, living at Iznakurnozh - from the novel "Monday begins on Saturday" by the Strugatsky brothers. But in Tatyana Tolstoy's Kysya, rather, cannibalistic features appeared.

Werewolves

The most memorable cats are werewolves associated with evil spirits (the Poles came up with special word- "kotolak"). Out of competition - the cat Behemoth from Bulgakov's novel The Master and Margarita, named after the demon of carnal desires from the biblical Book of Job. But the very first, it seems, was a werewolf from Antony Pogorelsky's 1825 Lafertovskaya Poppy Plant. In this story (the first Russian romantic fantasy), the groom, the titular adviser Aristarkh Faleleich Murlykin, is thrown into the cat. The book came out just a few years after the German "Worldly Views of Cat Murr" by Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann - the pillar of the world's "cat" prose.

Alexander Kuzmin. Illustration for Nikolai Gogol's story "May Night, or the Drowned Woman"

Elena Eskova. Illustration for the novel by Mikhail Bulgakov "The Master and Margarita"

Boris Dekhterev. Illustration for the short story by Antony Pogorelsky "Lafertovskaya poppy seed house"

Of course, Nikolai Gogol could not do without werecats in his Little Russian evenings. In May Night, or the Drowned Woman, the heroine is rescued from the house by a beautiful young stepmother who turns into a cat at night. In The Evening on the Eve of Ivan Kupala, an old witch turns into a black cat and tells her where to find the treasure.

However, in East Slavic fairy tales, the positive hero Ivan Koshkin's son can also turn into a cat; and Ivan Tsarevich has a brother Kot Kotovich.

Instructive

Even when it comes to completely ordinary, real animals, without any devilry and supernatural powers, writers cannot resist and give them human features. Cats become the personification of vices, such as greed, gluttony, deceit, cunning. Recall the winged “And Vaska listens and eats” from Krylov’s fable “The Cat and the Cook”. By the way, in poems composed around 1812, contemporaries saw a satire on Napoleon's desire for world domination. And his "The Cat and the Nightingale" of 1824 ("... The thin songs of the Nightingale in the claws of the Cat") - about censorship in the press. "The Pike and the Cat" ("... It's a problem if the shoemaker starts the pies") - generally about Admiral Chichagov and his failures.

Alexander Deineka. The cat and the cook. 1922

Evgeny Rachev. Cat and Nightingale. 1961

George Narbut. Pike and cat. 1909

The image of a cat was used in their fables by all lovers of the genre - Ivan Khemnitser, Alexander Sumarokov, Ivan Dmitriev, Vasily Zhukovsky, Vasily Pushkin, Leo Tolstoy (in fairy tales) and Sergey Mikhalkov. And everything went, of course, from Aesop and La Fontaine.

Mysterious

A separate place among rhyming cats in Russian culture is occupied by the plot "How the mice buried the cat." Already in the 1690s, in the earliest collection of Russian proverbs, the proverb “The mice of the cat are dragged to the graveyard” is found, then it will take the form “The mice are burying the cat” and “The mice are burying the cat”. A lot of popular prints on this plot have been preserved, which are accompanied by a long rhymed text (“Fables in faces found in old svetlitsy wrapped in black tarp, like mice bury a cat, see off their enemy, give him the last honor ...”, etc.). The engraving has become such a striking sign of the 18th century that in The Captain's Daughter Grinev sees it in the house of Captain Mironov, Roslavlev examines it at the inn in Mikhail Zagoskin's novel, and Lazhechnikov hangs it in the cracker's room in The Ice House.

How mice buried a cat. Splint. OK. 1725

How mice buried a cat. Splint. 18th century

Scientists argued for a long time that this engraving illustrated: there was an opinion that this was such a satire on the burial of Peter the Great, invented by the Old Believers, and his associates were recognized in the offensive nicknames of other characters of the lubok. There is still no final opinion on the meaning of the lubok. However, there is a version that this is how the plot from Aesop's fable was refracted on Russian soil, in which the cat pretended to be dead in order to eat mice.

Thanks to the publication of the beginning of the 20th century with illustrations by Georgy Narbut, this story, designed in Russian by Vasily Zhukovsky, entered the golden fund of our children's fairy tales. But, keep in mind that the prose text familiar from this book is a light version. Zhukovsky's original of 1831 was written in hexameter ("... Without reconnoitring things in order, / We decided to bury the cat, and the grave word / Immediately ripened ..."). The poet included him in his "War of Mice and Frogs" - an arrangement of the ancient poem "Batrachomyomachia", a parody of the Iliad, where animals fight instead of Trojans and Danaans. The same plot in a more familiar style - in Nikolai Zabolotsky's 1933 poem “Like mice fought with a cat”: “The cat lies - it does not move, / It does not turn from side to side. / He's screwed up, robber, he's screwed up, / A karachun rolled on a cat, a karachun!

George Narbut. Cat funeral. Illustration. 1910

Gennady Yasinsky. How mice fought with a cat. Illustration of a poem by Nikolai Zabolotsky

However, if the splint is really an illustration of this plot, then the mice here are much smarter than the heroes of the fable: on the splint, if you look closely, the paws of a cat on a funeral cart are carefully tied just in case.

Cheerful

The greatest expanse for cats, of course, is in children's poems, counting rhymes and lullabies. Already Vasily Zhukovsky in 1814 wrote a nice little: “The cat is bald, the cat is poor! / Why jumped out the window; / There was a copper basin on the window, / A basin, a clay bottom! But the main masterpieces of children's poems were created in the twentieth century. All the masters of the genre were noted: Agniya Barto, Boris Zakhoder, Samuel Marshak (and both his own and those translated from English are good), Sergey Mikhalkov, Yunna Moritz, Andrey Usachev, Daniil Kharms, Sasha Cherny ...

Vladimir Konashevich. Illustration for Samuil Marshak's poem "The boat is sailing, sailing"

Vladimir Konashevich. Illustration for Samuil Marshak's poem "The boat is sailing, sailing"

In the second half of the twentieth century, cats penetrate from children's books into cartoons: Grigory Oster ("Kitten named Woof"), Vladimir Suteev ("Who said "meow"?"), Eduard Uspensky ("Uncle Fyodor, a dog and a cat") and etc.

Let's not forget cats in prose either: the cat Basilio from the adventures of Pinocchio Alexei Tolstoy, however, is again an anthropomorphic character. In 1872, Nikolai Wagner's "Tales of the Purring Cat" were published, where the story is told from the perspective of the venerable Cat (and the tales are so complex that they are written more for adults than for children). It was necessary to wait for Paustovsky, so that in his "Cat the Thief" he finally described the animal as a normal naturalist, in the spirit of Seton-Thompson. And Kuprin in 1927 wrote a memoir story "Yu-yu", about his beloved cat.

Cat Matroskin. Frame from the cartoon "Three from Prostokvashino" (1978)

Igor Oleinikov. Illustration for the poem by Daniil Kharms "The Amazing Cat"

Fiction also cannot do without cats: Kira Bulychev has a story “Mind for a Cat”, and in 2004 Russian science fiction writers even released an anthology “Man to Man is a Cat”, where there are writers Divov, Lukyanenko, Zorich and Kaganov. Vladimir Dmitriev. Costume design for Igor Stravinsky's ballet Tales about a Fox. 1927

Zinaida Serebryakova. Portrait of Natasha Lansere with a cat. 1924

Fairy tales in which cats appear mutate into a genre that would later be called magical realism, or even into something indefinable (like The Master and Margarita). Aleksey Remizov writes on the basis of the Slavic folklore "Salting", where there is a fairy tale "Kotofey Kotofeich". His prose is so patterned that the first publisher, whose magazine published parallel French and Russian versions of the texts, rejected her manuscript as untranslatable. Cats also appear in other texts by Remizov.

Sometimes poets compose trinkets in the spirit of children's poems, for example, Akhmatova ("Murka, don't go, there's an owl"), Innokenty Annensky ("Without end and without beginning (lullaby)"). Teffi had fun with poems about the love of Whitepaw and Tigercat. She also has a very touching story"Mr. Furtenau's Cat" is about an old man's pet that changed other people's lives.

Marina Tsvetaeva exclaims "There is no shame in a cat's heart!" ("Cats"). Khodasevich writes an obituary for his pet in a solemn style: “In amusements he was so wise and amusing in wisdom / My comforting friend and inspirer!” and compares it with the sparrow of Catullus ("In memory of the cat Murr").