Jo Ritale: Good evening everyone. My name is Jo Ritale and I'm the Assistant Director General of Collection here at the National Library. It is my pleasure to welcome you this evening. It is great to see so many book lovers, cat lovers, and curious minds in one room. And if you are all 3, you are in for a real treat tonight.

To begin, I want to acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of this land, the Ngunnawal people. I acknowledge their ongoing connection to the land and pay my respects to their Elders past and present, and through them to all First Nations people here tonight or listening online. As a meeting place, Canberra has been the cradle of numerous stories, a country of creativity. The Ngunnawal and First Nations people across Australia have been keepers and sharers of stories and histories for millennia. And this is a legacy the Library continues to follow today.

Tonight, we are exploring a really delightful idea, the special bond between great writers and their cats. Not just as pets, but as companions, muses, and sometimes the leading character in their own right. As someone who is owned by 2 rather bossy felines, I am extremely excited at this opportunity to introduce our fabulous speaker and you will have to forgive the occasional cat pun.

We will hear stories from Susannah Fullerton's charming new book, 'Great Writers and the Cats Who Owned Them', where she takes us through fascinating and often humorous tales of literary felines. These stories are fun, insightful, and really show how animals and writers have connected in surprising ways throughout history. Some of my favourite writers and cat characters feature in Susannah's book, and I cannot wait to hear more about them.

Our speaker, Susannah Fullerton, is one of Australia's most respected literary historians and lecturers. She has written many books and led literary tours all around the world. And tonight she will give us a delightful glimpse into this unique side of literary history.

After the talk, Susannah will be signing copies of her book in the foyer. Our bookshop will remain open if you would like to purchase a copy.

So whether you are here because you love cats, you love books, or you just love a good story, we hope you enjoy this purr-fect pairing of literature and feline [unclear]. Please join me in welcoming Susannah Fullerton.

Susannah Fullerton: Thank you, Jo, for the lovely introduction and thank you all for coming along this evening to learn something about great writers and the felines who gave them so much pleasure and also, of course, inspiration.
There's no doubt that authors and their cats go together wonderfully. Cats are quiet in a study. They don't need to be taken for walks no matter what the weather. They act as alarm clocks, waking a sleepy author from their warm bed and encouraging them to get up and start writing. They're comforting, they're beautiful, and of course, they're inspiring.

And authors who love to play with words also have to think of a name for their feline companion. And I give lists in my book of some of the quirky and interesting names that have been chosen by writers for their cats.
And of course, cats can be used in fiction as a way of revealing character, saying something about a particular person. They can move the plot along. They can be used in all sorts of intriguing ways in wonderful literature.
I don't think the cats have ever forgotten that they were once worshipped as gods in ancient Egypt. They remember that and they remind us of that frequently.

Now, my book covers 17 different authors. Also, of course, the cats who owned and inspired them. But between those chapters, I have little pauses for thought where I give you information about cats in literary hotels, cats and theatres. The very first book ever written about cat care. The Cheshire Cat, who of course is so fascinating. Rudyard Kipling's wonderful cat who walked by himself, the literary reason behind the term 'Tom Cat' for a male and much, much more.

So let me begin with the first of my authors, the wonderful Dr Samuel Johnson, who was owned by Hodge. It has to be said that life in 18th century London was not a good place for a cat. Cats had been rather tormented in the middle ages. They'd been seen as the familiars of witches or associated with the devil, and people were still not terribly fond of cats by the time we get to the 18th century. There were very few laws protecting them, and there was a lot of cruelty to cats in London. But during the age of the enlightenment, gradually people were starting to feel that maybe God had made the cat as well as man, and therefore the cat should be treated more kindly.

Now, one cat, Hodge, was incredibly fortunate. He moved into a house in Goff Square in London. Today, the wonderful Dr Samuel Johnson Museum, well worth a visit, tucked in just behind Fleet Street. And Hodge arrived, we don't know exactly when, and Dr Johnson was working on his famous dictionary of the English language, not the very first dictionary of the English language, but the first decent dictionary of English. And I like to think that Hodge sat on the manuscript pages of C where the word C-A-T was defined, but we can't be absolutely certain of that.

Now, he loved Hodge, and he was willing to do almost anything to keep Hodge happy, which included feeding Hodge on oysters. Much cheaper then than they are today. This is a London oyster seller. And Dr Johnson didn't like to send his servant out to shop for food for the cat. This is his servant, a man called Francis Barber, who came from the West Indies, originally a slave. And he felt that Francis might feel it was sort of beneath his dignity to go shopping for cat food. So Dr Johnson, although he himself couldn't see very well, he had a terrible shambling walk, he had all sorts of health problems. He would go out and he would buy the oysters for Hodge to keep him happy.

And this is a posthumous portrait of Hodge. Hodge was actually a sable cat, so a very dark cat in colour. This was done after Dr Johnson died. The artists clearly had no idea what Hodge actually looked like, but pictures of Dr Johnson caressing Hodge were very popular.

Now, Hodge is today wonderfully commemorated just outside the wonderful museum in Goff Square. And he's on a pedestal, which is about child height so that children visitors can manage to give Hodge a stroke when they're there. And he's sitting on a copy of the dictionary, and next to him you can see a couple of empty oyster shells. So he has been dining well.

Hodge has been immortalised in so many different ways. Southolk Cathedral always has a cathedral cat, and he is always named Hodge. If you've read the Agatha Raisin novel, she's got a cat called Hodge and another one called Boswell, although Boswell didn't like cats. So I think Hodge was a very fortunate cat indeed the day he made his way into the arms of Dr. Samuel Johnson.

The next of my authors is a man who we don't read a lot today, Horace Walpole, but he was very, very famous in his day in the 18th century. He was actually the father of the Gothic novel. So he wrote books like 'The Castle of Otranto', sort of the beginnings, if you like, of the thrillers that we like to read today. They gave everyone shivers of excitement as they read.

He was the son of the Britain's first prime minister, Sir Robert Walpole, and he grew up in very comfortable circumstances. Sorry, there he is again. Oh no, sorry, that's his friend, Thomas Grey. He went to university with Thomas Grey, who later became a famous poet, and this would come into the story of his cat, Salima, a little bit further along.

So he lived very comfortably in Arlington Street in London, but he also had a very nice country property down at Twickenham. And Horace Walpole was a tremendous collector. He did have lots of pets in his life, but he wasn't very lucky with them. He did actually have to have a pet cemetery because his pets kept dying. On one occasion, he was travelling to Italy in a carriage going over a mountain pass and his little dog needed to do its business. So he let it out of the carriage so it could make itself comfortable. And the poor little thing was seized by a wolf and was never seen again. So Horace's pets did not really tend to have very long lives.

But he loved collecting nice pieces of China and furniture, many of which you can see at Strawberry Hill, his country home today. And one of the things he purchased was this very beautiful Chinese bowl. Blue and white China was just starting to come into Britain from the east. It was highly expensive and collectible.

And what he did was to end up putting goldfish in the bowl. Now, goldfish we take for granted today, but then they were very exotic and rare. So if you could show your guests this beautiful bowl with little goldfish swimming in it, well, that was a real status symbol. The trouble was it was not just the guests that admire the goldfish. In 1747, his beautiful cat, Salima, who he loved, was watching the fish in the bowl. She climbed onto the rim to get a closer look, and you can all guess what happened. Poor Salima fell in. This was February. That water would have been pretty chilly. No servant heard Salima's frantic cries, and she ended up drowning in the bowl.

Now, when you're a writer and you've lost your beloved pet, you want to do something littery to commemorate that animal. But Horace Walpole was not very good at writing poetry, and he felt a poem was called for. So he asked his good friend, Thomas Grey, if he would write a poem about the death of Salima. And so he ended up writing 'Ode on the death of a favourite cat drowned in a tub of goldfishers'. So there's no dramatic suspense in the poem. You know what's going to happen. And as sort of a morality tale, the cat has lusted after that gold flickering around in the water. So it was a hugely popular poem. All their friends read it, and ever since it has appeared in many, many different anthologies of poetry.

Here you can see his wonderful Gothic home, Strawberry Hill. Those cats were part of a temporary exhibition. They're not always there.

But people loved the poem. And it was actually illustrated by a man called William Blake, who of course was a very famous artist and poet himself. And he did rather strange illustrations to go with the book. And the cat was also illustrated by a writer called Kathleen Hale. She wrote a book, very popular children's book called 'Orlando the Marmalade Cat'. And she ended up also doing illustrations. That's one of them there. But as you can see, Horace Warpol's cat has inspired books and art and sculpture and all sorts of things.

We move on now to Robert Southey, who was poet laureate in his day, although again, not hugely read now. He was a biographer, historian, poet, essayist, and travel writer. And I can guarantee that everyone in this room has read some Robert Southey. He wrote a story about a little girl who wanders into a house where 3 bears are living, and she tries the porridge and she tries out the beds. The little girl in his original version was not called Goldilocks, but of course you all know that story.

Now, Robert Southey, who was very well connected to Wordsworth and also to Kohleridge, he and Koloridge married sisters, so they knew each other extremely well, lived at Greta Hall near [unclear] in the beautiful lake district, and he filled the place with cats. And his absolute favourite was Rumpelstilzchen, who he adored, generally known by the family just as Rumpel. So Rumpel arrived and made himself wonderfully at home at Greta Hall. This is Southey's library where he was very comfortable indeed. And he had a very magnificent tale. Southey wrote about him in his letters. He wrote poems about Rumpel. He absolutely adored his cat. And he also grieved when his cats died.

And what I try to do in my book is to give some historical information about cat care. There were no vets in the lake district then. There were no vets trained in Britain. In fact, the very first veterinary training college was in 1761, and it took a while before vets were trained in England. And then they were in big cities like London. They were not in small towns up in the lake district. So what did you do when your cat got sick? How did you deal with it? How did you manage before kitty litter was invented and when was it invented? And what did you feed your cat before there were tins of jelly meat and Whiskers and things like that to give the animal? So I tried to fill in some of that historical information.

So Rumpel came as a kitten, but unfortunately another cat arrived soon afterwards, and he was named Hurley Burlebus. And the air was rent with cat fights and yowls. And the cats did not like each other at all. Finally, a compromise was reached. Rumpel was allowed to stay in Southey's library, he was the indoor cat. And Hurley Burlebus went out to live in the garden. So there are still cats at Greta Hall today. It's now an Airbnb. You can book it to stay in. So Southey I think, would approve that there are still cats roaming the garden.

But when Rumpel died, Southey wrote that there should be court mourning in catland. And he did try to console himself that Rumpel had had as long and happier life as Cat could wish for, but he really missed his cat. So there is Greta Hall today, as I said, a place that you can go and stay at. And it's lovely to know that cats are still roaming the grounds.

The next of my authors is Alexandre Dumas, who was owned by Mysouff. Mysouff 1 because he was followed by Mysouff 2 and Mysouff 3. So you have to distinguish here.

Now, Alexandre Dumas set off as a young man from his country or a small town where he lived to get to Paris and make his fortune in some way or another. He began by trying to write plays and getting them performed. He actually became a secretary to a Duke because he had very beautiful handwriting and could copy documents very nicely. And finally, of course, he came to write historical novels and became famed for books such as 'The Count of Monte Cristo', 'The Three Musketeers', and many more.

So in the 1820s, he was living with his mother in Paris, and soon he was owned by a cat called Mysouff. He loved exotic animals. He actually owned for a while a pet vulture who he named Diogenes Jagertha. Diogenes used to nip everybody's ankles, which sounds very painful, but Dumas thought the bird was absolutely fabulous.
He also ended up writing about his pets. 'Hisoire De Mes Betes', the story of my animals or my pets. So he, of course, wrote about Mysouff in that book.

But Mysouff was amazing because when Dumas went off to the office every day, he would escort him to the end of the street. And then at the end of the day, at the time that he knew Dumas was likely to come home, he would walk to the end of the street, meet him there, and escort him back to the house. But if Dumas was running late, the cats somehow seemed to know that and would only turn up at the exact moment that Dumas appeared at the end of the street.

Mysouff was followed by Mysouff 2, who ended up killing some of his pet birds and was put on trial for it. And Dumas would end up founding a feline defence league, a very early animal protection society. He persuaded some of his literary friends like Anatole France and Guy de Maupassant to join that league. That was established in 1845.

And he felt that a cat was just so beautiful. You could never really stop admiring its grace, its elegance, its softness. He absolutely adored cats. And there you can see Dumas later on in his life. So his son, Alexandre Dumas fils, who was also a very successful author, he was the one that had Mysouff 3. So owning pets was a family business.

I think possibly the author I most enjoyed writing about for my book was Edward Lear, who was owned by a wonderful cat called Foss. Actually a [unclear], but the name was shortened to Foss and Lear worshipped his cat and the cat was very fond of him as well.

Lear's life was a fairly peripatetic one. He was always on the move going off to paint pictures. He was a wonderful artist in different parts of Europe. So for a long time, he couldn't own a cat. He didn't have a settled enough lifestyle. But eventually he was living at this house in San Rimo in Italy, just across the border from France, and he wasn't travelling as much and he was writing his limericks and things like that. And finally, a neighbour ended up giving him a cat and he named that cat Foss.

Now, Lear was a rather lonely man. He suffered from epilepsy, then seen as a rather shameful disease, and he kept himself to himself a lot. And he knew if an attack was coming on, he just needed to be on his own. But the cat understood him. He understood the cat. And they became wonderful companions.

And being an artist, he decided to draw Foss. Foss, it has to be said, would not have won a feline beauty competition. He was very obese. He was striped and he had only half a tail. You can find out why in my book. So there's one of his fabulous pictures of Foss. Foss looking a little startled and surprised, but he drew Foss very frequently. For a child he knew, he did an alphabet series where he illustrated Cat, of course, with Foss. He wrote limericks about Foss. He just mentioned Foss in his letters. And visitors, if they did not like Foss were not usually asked to visit again.

He had to leave the villa that he lived in San Rimo, and it was terribly noisy, and he had to build a house further along the coast. So he built the house to exactly the same design as the old one, so that Foss would not be discombobulated and would know his way around.

So there's another wonderful picture of Foss. Both of them are getting fatter as they get on, but Foss actually has his own Wikipedia page. You can look them up. So that's some fame for a cat. And there should be a photograph of Foss here. Lear sat very patiently with the cat in the crook of his arm, but of course, taking a photo then was a slower business. And just as the photographer was about to click the shutter, Foss, as is the way with cats, jumped up and ran away.

So Lear would describe Foss, and there's one last picture of him, as this stumpy tailed, poorly and unattractive tabby cat. But I think Foss has achieved his own fabulous immortality.
Now, Charles Dickens was much more of a dog man than a cat man. There are over 500 references to dogs in his fiction. There are very few of cats, and most of those are not very complimentary. This is Crook from 'Bleak House'. He's got a snarling menacing cat called Lady Jane.

So Dickens didn't seem at all interested in cats. However, his daughter, Mamie, one day came home with a cat and she said, 'No, I really want to keep this cat.' So the cat was named William. The trouble was that William gave birth to kittens fairly soon afterwards. So William had to be renamed Williamina. And Williamina was determined that Dickens' study was the best place for her kittens. So she carried them all into the study. It was nice and warm. And Dicken said, 'No, no, I'm not having those cats in here.' And they were all carried out, but Williamina persisted. The cats kept being carried in. Finally, homes were found for most of them, except for one called Bob. Bob ended up staying. And before long, he was known in the household as the master's cat.

Now, Bob was deaf and he probably couldn't hear himself meow, and he didn't know how to attract Dickens' attention. And Dickens would get involved in a book or his writing, and the cat learned to snuff the candle with his paw in order to attract the attention of his master.

Dickens is said to have made this statement, 'What greater gift than the love of a cat?' It's plastered on cups and carry bags and all sorts of things, but almost certainly Dickens never actually said that. So I look in my book at the way in which we ascribe words to authors that we want them to have said, even if they didn't actually say it.

So Bob ended up dying in 1862, but he has had a rather strange fate since then. Dickens' sister-in-law decided to give her brother-in-law a gift. She had Bob's front paw, the one that snuffed the candles, made into a letter opener. And this is on display in a library in America today. The Victorians were very into recycling and one didn't waste body parts if one had a spare body part going. Most of us today, I think people always go, "Ugh," when I mention this bit and show the picture, but the Victorians loved it. They often turned bits of their pets into useful things to remind them of the happiness that the pet had given them. So a rather interesting fate for Bob there.

I loved writing about Mark Twain. Always such a funny man, adored cats so much that when he stayed in hotels, he would rent kittens so that he had kittens to play with while he was there. And then he'd make sure they all had good homes after he was moving on.

Now, he had a cat called Bambino and Bambino was a sort of emotional support animal originally to his daughter, Clara, who was suffering mental health problems and was spending some time in a sort of sanitorium to make sure she felt better. And she smuggled in a black cat called Bambino. Now the authority said, sorry, no cats here, not allowed. So she said to her father, 'Oh, please, Dad, would you mind taking the cat and giving him a home?' So Mark Twain could never resist a cat ever. And this is not Bambino in this picture. He ended up taking home Bambino. There you can see Bambino at home in his study.

Now, on one occasion, Bambino got lost. He wandered out and nobody knew where he was. Mark Twain was desperate to get his cat back, and he advertised $5 reward if you turned up with Bambino. Hundreds of people clutching black cats turned up, not because they were certain they had Bambino, but because they wanted a glimpse of the famous Mark Twain. So eventually, of course, Bambino did turn up, and so that was all fine.
But Mark Twain ended up writing about cats as this short story, 'A Cat Tail'. And when he played his favourite game of billiards, he had special rules if there was a cat sleeping on the billiard table, or as in this case, tucked into one of the little pockets where the balls go.

So he was also involved in founding a very new American society for the prevention of cruelty to animals. Cats slept on his shoulder. He tried to teach his cats to yull in German. He's very funny whenever he writes about cats. So there's another picture of Mark Twain enjoying a kitten.

And he famously said, 'If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat.' So I think you get a sense from that of how highly he thought of the feline species.

Another French writer is Colette who adored her cats. In 1926, Colette went off to a cat show in Paris. The very first cat show in the world had been held just a couple of years before in London. And this created something of a sort of feline frenzy of people learning about the different breeds and where you could get a cat of that breed. And what were the differences between the breeds. And people became very keen on the idea of a particular type of cat rather than just cats in general. And it was at this cat show that Colette saw a breed of cat called a Chartreux cat or [unclear] if it's a female. She fell madly in love and for the rest of her life, she had Chartreux cats or Chartreux cats. Evidently Charles de Gaulle had them as well.

Time spent with cats, she said, is never wasted. And she ended up writing a wonderful novella, 'La Chatte'. In fact, she named her cat, rather unoriginally I think, La Chatte, the cat. And this story is an intriguing one about a newly married man who adores his cat called Saha. And in the end, the new bride starts to feel that the cat is getting more attention than she is, and she takes rather drastic action. So read the story and find out what happens. It's really fascinating.

So throughout her life, she adored her cats. She grieved terribly when La Chatte died. She wrote a rather wonderful story called 'Dialogues de betes', which is a sort of conversation between her cat, La Chatte, and her dog.
And she moved into the [unclear] Royale, fabulous place to live in Paris. La Chatte sadly had to be put down in 1939. She vowed no more cats, but of course she did break that vow, as so many of us do. Colette has been described as the frizzle-headed catwoman of 20th century French literature. Perhaps it's not a bad way to be remembered.

Then we move on to a great favourite of mine. I'm an 'Anne of Green Gables' tragic, LM Montgomery, who was owned by her cat, Daffy, and she absolutely worshipped Daffy. Now, in 1892, Montgomery jotted down an idea for a book in her notebook. 'Elderly couple apply to orphan asylum for a boy. By mistake, a girl is sent to them'. That would be turned into the wonderful 'Anne of Green Gables' published in 1905, and Daffy was present through the writing of all of that book. And she got up early in the morning and wrapped herself in rugs and things to keep warm, and Daffy no doubt was there on her lap as she wrote the book.

And there you can see a rather grainy photograph of Daffy. But she kept very meticulous journals. She kept little tufts of cat hair. She wrote obituaries for her cats when they died.She'd had a rather lonely childhood with her mother dying when she was a baby. Her father remarried, moved away, and she was dumped with grandparents who didn't like cats. So getting a cat inside the house took a lot of persistence indeed.

And in her novels, you know a character is a good character when they love cats. When Gilbert Blythe proposes for the second time to Anne, he offers her a cat as part of what marriage with him will include. So it's no wonder, she says yes to him. And there in a Canadian sort of celebration of Montgomery and a cat has been included in that.

And there you can see a page of one of her notebooks. So pictures of cats, notes of cats. She really was a complete cataholic or illurephile, which is another word for a person who adores cats. And when she replied to her fan mail, she would draw a little silhouette of a cat beneath her signature.

Later on, she had a cat called Lucky. And Lucky was actually lucky enough to have an entire novel dedicated to him. But I think the cats were misnamed. I think that Daffy was the lucky one because it was Daffy who was present during the creation of Canada's greatest novel. So he was a very fortunate cat indeed.

We move on to Sir Winston Churchill. Best of course remembered today as a great politician, but he won the Nobel Prize for Literature and was a very prolific and of course a very fine writer. And he was owned by a cat called Nelson. Now, Nelson became Chief Mouser. It is an official position at number 10 Downing Street. And Churchill said Nelson did a huge amount to assist the war effort. He acted, he destressed the prime minister. And by lying on Churchill's rather large stomach, he helped keep him warm, which saved on heating bills during the war.

So he loved all animals. There he is greeting a cat on board one of the naval ships. He was particularly fond of pigs. He said conversation with pigs was always fabulous. But he loved goats and geese and ducks and cats and horses. So he was a very keen animal lover indeed.

And here we can see a cartoon of Nelson. Now he was called Nelson because Churchill was one day outside the Admiralty Building in London. When he saw this large black cat chasing a very big dog and he was so impressed by the bravery of the cat. People told him it had been hanging around for days. It was astray. So he took Nelson home. Lucky day for Nelson. Churchill would pour cream onto the table and Nelson would lap it up. He was given salmon and all sorts of lovely things, though during the war that food did begin to deteriorate because even Churchill had to bear in mind rationing and things like that.

I was intrigued to learn that at the start of World War II, many people were encouraged to euthanize their pets. There was a real worry that food shortages would mean you couldn't feed your pet. If London was bombed, terrified animals might get separated from their owners or maimed. And it's thought that as many as 750,000 cats and dogs were put down at the start of the war.

Later, he had a marmalade coloured cat called Tango. You can see him there with the Churchills, but he was hugely loved by Churchill who grieved terribly when Nelson eventually disappeared.
He was given, on one occasion, a rather larger form of cat, a lion cub. He really wanted to keep it at 10 Downing Street. He said it would be fantastic when members of the opposition came to call, but the lion was growing and eventually he gave it to the zoo, but he used to go and visit it quite frequently at the zoo.

Later, he had a cat who he loved called Jock. And at Churchill's home, Chartwell in the south of England, there is always a cat called Jock in residence. The family insisted that there would always be a cat there at the house, and the cat always had to be called Jock. So there is the current jock making himself at home on Churchill's shoulders.

We think of Ernest Hemingway as a very macho man, hunting, shooting, and fishing. But when it came to cats, he was a total softie. And he was owned by Boise, who was his favourite cat ever. He absolutely loved him. Now, on Christmas morning, 1942, Hemingway took his2 sons to have something to eat at a cafe there in Kohima in Cuba. A very hungry, skinny cat arrived and the boys fed it on bits of prawn. And then they said, 'Oh, please, dad, can we take the cat home with us?' Well, Hemingway could never resist a cat. So Boise was taken home. And before long, he was top cat in a house that had a lot of cats in it.

Boise would actually be immortalised in 35 pages of Hemingway's novel 'Islands in the Stream'. He put Boise name unchanged straight into his novel. He was a black and white cat. Hemingway loved teaching him tricks of all different sorts. He also gave the cat milk well-laced with whiskey, probably not the best thing to do.

But he kept collecting other cats. And by 1954, he was living in Cuba. He had 54 cats on the property. He knew the names of all of them, knew where they'd come from, knew their personalities, but Hemingway's various wives did start to feel that there were too many cats. One of them took Boise to be sorted out by the vets so there wouldn't be as many kittens around. But in the end, Hemingway built this tower in the ground, especially for his cats, but not for Boise. Boise was always allowed to be inside.

So it was always a huge compliment from Hemingway if you were described as being catlike or if he called any of his wives cat or kitten, it was always meant as a compliment. And there you can see him relaxing very happily with his cats.

Then he left Cuba and he moved to Florida. And there he was given a cat called Snowball, which was very unusual. It was what is called a polydactyl cat. So it meant it had one extra toe. And these cats are sometimes today called Hemingway cats. And the descendant of that original cat, many of them are polydactals and they are roaming the property of the Hemingway Museum in Florida today.

He loved what he called the emotional honesty of cats. And he called them his love sponges. And probably the very last words that Hemingway ever spoke was the word 'cat'. So cats were there with him right to the very end and were hugely important.

Margaret Mitchell, another fascinating American, of course, wrote Gone With the Wind, was owned by a very disreputable cat called Old Timer. Now, she was not a very easy child. She was a real tomboy. Margaret Mitchell was always known as Peggy. So Peggy was a difficult little girl and her parents wanted a nice photo of her. Got her prettily dressed in her lacy dress, took her to the photographer and Peggy threw a tantrum. She was not going to behave. But then the photographer had an idea. He said, 'Look, I'll give you this kitten. I need to get a good photo of the kitten. So would you please hold it so that I can photograph the kitten?' And then Peggy was fine. She behaved herself.

So as a child, she taught her cats tricks. She absolutely loved them. She was always a real tomboy, and there's a rather beautiful photograph. We don't know which cat this is that she's holding, but she certainly loved them.

Now, she ended up when she was living in this apartment in Atlanta, being adopted by a very disreputable street cat who she named Old Timer. Old Timer kept getting involved in fights. And on one occasion, he came in very badly mangled. And as Margaret Mitchell said, his equipment had been very badly damaged, so you can imagine what that is. They tried putting ointment on it. No, he licked it off. She wanted to put him in a diaper, but her husband, John said, 'No, no, that's too undignified for a cat.' But finally, the said equipment got very badly infected indeed. They had to take him to the vet and have it removed. And as Margaret Mitchell rather delightfully said, 'his equipment has gone with the wind'. So Old Timer made himself very much at home.

He was succeeded by a cat called Count Dracula. And again, we don't know if this was Count Dracula. He was very badly behaved and eventually had to be given away.

But I think Margaret Mitchell's wonderful portrayal of a cat is Scarlett O'Hara, who is often described as being catlike in the novel. And I give a little bit of information about cats in the Civil War. Both Robert E Lee and Abraham Lincoln were huge cat fans. So if they had ever met, they wouldn't have had much in common, but they could at least have talked peacefully about cats. And interestingly, the actor who portrayed Scarlett O'Hara, Vivian Lee adored Simese cats. So there's another cat connection there.

Dorothy L Sayers was owned by a cat called Blitz who she adopted during the war years as a tiny kitten and absolutely adored him. She wrote about cats in her Christmas cards and letters to friends. She ended up with loads of cats and it was dangerous to visit her because she could well leave the house with a stray kitten. This is where she had a home in a place called Wittem in Essex. And she'd been on a day trip to London, found a little ginger kitten in a bomb site. She took him home and she appropriately named him Blitz. And there's a statue of Dorothy L Sayers outside the house, in fact, outside the library, and there is Blitz immortalised in the statue. And I've got to keep moving here.

Paul Gallico, who wrote 'The Snow Goose', 'Mrs Harris goes to Paris' and other wonderful works, was not allowed a cat when he was a boy and longed for one. So he would eventually put that longing into his fiction. And there you can see he eventually owned again about over 20 cats. He absolutely loved them.

And he had a smoky grey cat who was called Sambo. Sambo went missing. And Paul Galico found, as some of us do when we love cats, that his cat was two-timing him, having a nice meal down the road and then arriving starving at his place and wanting another nice meal there.

But he wrote many interesting books about cats, the gorgeous book, 'Jennie', about a boy who sort of turns into a cat. 'Thomasina', the cat who thought she was God. And 'The Silent Meow' is a manual said to be written by a cat on how to train your owner to be a good cat slave. So Paul Gallico loved his cats and there's a rather nice cat quote here about purring. Why does a cat pear?

So just a couple of few more authors to go. Dame Muriel Spark the great Scottish author who was owned by Bluebell, came into her life. She herself was rather cat-like, very sleek and elegant and rather reserved, but she adored Bluebell. Perfect cat, beautiful cat. She loved the cat's aloofness and what she called its marvellous beauty. And there you can see Bluebell.

She ended up putting Bluebell into her novel, 'Robinson', where the cat plays a sort of game of ping pong, which is what Muriel had taught Bluebell. So she also ended up writing an essay called 'Allurophilia' about worshipping cats. And she would end up living in Tuscany with a cat that had been given to her by fellow author, Patricia Highsmith. So there you can see her with her cat Spider.

So she would convert during her lifetime to Catholicism, and she became absolutely certain that when she arrived at the Pearly Gates, Bluebell would be there to meet her.

And very quickly, Doris Lessing, who was owned by El Magnifico. She grew up in Rodesia, not an easy place to have a pet cat with wild animals around, but eventually she would end up getting a variety of cats, including one called Rufus. But finally, she got a large black and white cat who she named El Magnifico. And he is there in that picture, although a little hard to spot. And she adored him. Delicious cat, satiny cat, cat like a soft owl, cat with paws like moths, jewelled cat, miraculous cat, cat, cat, cat, she enthused.

However, poor El Magnifico, and you can see him there, ended up having a health problem. He had bone cancer and he had to have his leg amputated. And she writes so movingly in a wonderful little novella or short story really, 'The Old Age of El Magnifico' about the struggles of her disabled cat in learning to cope with his disability. It's an incredibly moving and wonderful piece of writing.

Now, I wanted to end my book with a living author, and I was very fortunate that a wonderful New Zealand writer, Dame Lynley Dodd, was willing to help me and give me information. She was owned by a cat called Wooskit, who becomes Scarface Claw in her fabulous 'Hairy Maclary' stories.

Now, she grew up with cats. That's one of her cats there in New Zealand, nicely tucked up in bed. She married a man called Tony who also loved cats, and they ended up getting a cat from the RSPCA. And they named, sorry, Wooskit inspired, sorry, not Scarface Claw, Slinky Malinki. So she ended up with this cat from the RSPCA, who would be the muse in so many ways for her.

Now, she ended up along with Tony's cousin writing her first book. 'My Cat Likes to Hide in Boxes', which was hugely popular. And this would lead to her marvellous array of children's books. So Scarface Claw, again, of course, inspired by one of her cats and the wonderful Slinky Malinki who goes stealing all sorts of odds and ends around the neighbourhood.

So Dame Lynley was so fabulous, gave me wonderful stories and information, which I included in my book. Sadly, eventually, of course, Wooskit died 1981. She would get a Burmese cat, Suki, named for Onsung Suki. And she loved drawing her cats very frequently.

But the wonderful animals from the 'Hairy Maclary' books are immortalised at a waterfront in New Zealand in Tauranga. And there you can see Slinky Malinki slinking along in the gutter, and there is Scarface Claw on the top of the pole terrorising the various dogs that I'm sure you know well from those wonderful stories.

So what I wanted to do was show in my book the amazing bond between writer and cat and how a particular cat inspired poems, letters, short stories, novels, and various other works. I wanted to give you quirky information about the authors and their personalities, but also the personality of the cat.

So it was a huge amount of fun to write. It was a terribly exciting day for me when it was accepted by the Bodleian Library who have produced a really beautiful book for me. It's very gorgeous to look at and I'm very proud of it.

And if it continues to sell as well as it has been doing, then what I'm planning to do is write a book on great writers and the dogs who love them. So that will be enormous fun to do.

But I hope that you have today enjoyed learning something about great writers and their cats.

I do produce a free monthly newsletter, Notes from a Book Addict. You can pick up a little leaflet out there or you can scan the code here in order to sign up for that newsletter, which keeps you posted about other talks that I've got coming up.

But I hope today you have enjoyed learning something about great writers and those wonderful animals called cats, who I suspect delight everybody in this room, otherwise you probably wouldn't be here tonight. So thank you for coming, and I do hope that you enjoy my book. Thanks everyone.

Jo Ritale: So thank you, Susannah. That was really fantastic. And I think I certainly grew up with Slinky Malinki as one of my childhood favourite characters. So wonderful to see that he's there in the book as well.

We do have time for some questions. We've got a couple of staff who've got microphones, so we would ask that you wait until you get the microphone so that everyone can hear your question, both those sitting here and those online. So if you have a question, pop your hand up.

Audience member 1: Thank you very much, Dr Fullerton. As a literary scholar and writer yourself, are you owned by a cat?

Susannah Fullerton: Yes. I did have 2 beautiful Maine Coon cats. Unfortunately, a lady along the road began feeding one when it wandered a bit, and I think she fed it on caviar. And we did say to her, 'Please don't feed our cat because she's not coming home now.' And we are very fond of her and we want to see her. And she said, 'Oh, I'm Greek. I have to feed the cat. I can't help it.' So the result is that our cat visits us very occasionally and we're always delighted to see her when she comes and out comes the food and then she turns up her nose at it and goes away again.

And sadly, her sister, a very beautiful cat, who was the well behaved one and stayed at home, died while I was writing the book. So I do miss her a lot. Yeah. They go off to cat heaven and it's one of the tragedies of owning a cat. You do have to cope when you lose that beloved animal. But all my life, I've had cats. I love them. Yeah.

So it was a joy writing my book about the personalities of all these cats. And it was a real challenge deciding which authors to put in the book. I had to do a bit of research for different authors that I thought of. And sometimes I simply couldn't find enough information about their cats. You've got to look at diaries, letters, biographies.

And one example of that was T S Elliot, who of course is famed for his book of 'Old Possum's Book of Magical Cats', and that's the Cats musical. And I thought, oh, he's an obvious choice. But I couldn't get any information about what his cats were called or, I really struggled. So there's one of the little pauses in the book is about TS Elliot and cats, but I just felt I couldn't do a whole chapter. So he had to sort of be relegated to a smaller part.

But I tried to have a variety of nationalities. So I've got American, Canadian, English, Scottish, Kiwi. So I wanted a bit of a mixture and I wanted to go from the 18th century through to the present day so that again, I had a variety so I can put the cats in the context of history of looking after cats and how people have regarded cats.

Dogs always had a better press. They were more obedient than cats. They could be trained to hunt for things and do some useful things. They could guard your property. Cats are more determined to live life as they want to live it, not as you expect them to live it. So people felt for a long time that they were untrainable and they were useful for catching rodents. That was the one thing that made people sort of tolerate cats. But really in the middle ages, they were not invited into the parlour. They were outside animals that just had to get on with surviving as best they could, killing the rats and things.

So they haven't always had an easy time of it. And I wanted to sort of show how that has changed. And now, of course, we've got all sorts of laws protecting cats, but they're still controversial today. Do you let your cats live outside and go outside because sadly they do kill birds. So there's always going to be issues connected with that.
Any other questions?

Audience member 2: Just a quick question. Have you ever ran across the information about nine lives and cats in their 9 lives?

Susannah Fullerton: I don't know where that comes from actually, that a cat has said to have 9 lives. So yes, I didn't really cover that in my book. Yeah. No, I don't know where that's originally come from, why they're thought to have 9 instead of 8 or 10 or whatever. Yeah. But yeah, interesting.
They're very good survivors. It was something I saw, I think I saw on Facebook today, a cat had fallen from 5 story building and landed on its feet and survived. So they are amazing. They do use up those 9 lives.

Audience member 3: Thank you so much for all of your talk tonight. I was wondering, Anne McCaffrey, who is a fairly famous science fiction fantasy writer, she talked about space cats.

Susannah Fullerton: There are an amazing range of books out today about cats doing all sorts of things. There are detective novels where the cat is a detective, cats going into space, cats going all over the place. Cats as therapy. The Japanese at the moment are crazy about cat books. The travelling cat chronicles and all sorts of cat books. So yes, cats have become really sort of fashionable in literature and they're going to amazing places.

Audience member 3: Absolutely. Perhaps a book on the travelling cat next.

Susannah Fullerton: I'm going to do the dog one next and then I'll see. Another question there.

Audience member 4: Hello. I haven't read your book yet. Apologies, but I really love the idea and it sounds amazing. Were there any notable queer or POC authors that you came across in your studies?

Susannah Fullerton: Sorry that were?

Audience member 4: Queer. So LGBTQI or person of colour.

Susannah Fullerton: Person of colour. No, I didn't really come across anybody definitely fitting that category. So yeah, I guess because so many of my authors were dead and have been dead for quite a long time when of course people were not acknowledging sexuality in different ways. So no, I didn't really find any leading right up to Lynley Dodds.

So this book could be written many times over by different people because I left out so many people that could have gone into it. I had to just cut it somewhere and think, no, you can't include everybody. And I wanted sort of a variety of types of cat, types of writer. So yeah, deciding who went into it was really hard. And there were certainly others that could have been put into it. Yeah.

Any other questions? No? Well, thank you all so much for coming tonight and thank you to everyone who has joined this talk online. And once again, I do hope you enjoy the book. Have a cat with you while you read it. Thanks.

Jo Ritale: Okay just a reminder that you can purchase a copy of the book at our bookshop and also that Susannah will go upstairs and sign copies in our foyer. So thank you all for coming tonight. We hope to see you again soon at another Library event, but please join me in thanking Susannah once more.