The Book, Cat, & Cat Book Lovers Almanac

of historical trivia regarding books, cats, and other animals. Actually this blog has evolved so that it is described better as a blog about cats in history and culture. And we take as a theme the advice of Aldous Huxley: If you want to be a writer, get some cats. Don't forget to see the archived articles linked at the bottom of the page.

May 25, 2009

May 25, 1803

"How Nature to keep Her True Balance Invented a Cat." This is the title in Ralph Waldo Emerson's notes about these thoughts:

"What phantasmagoria in these animals. Why is the snake so frightful, which is the line of beauty, and every resemblance of it pleases. See what horror and disgust of a rat...loathesome in its form... Yet interposed between this horror and the gentler kinds, is the cat, a beautiful horror, or a form of many bad qualities, but tempered, and thus strangely inserted as an offset, check, and temperment to that ugly horror. See then the squirrel strangely adorned with his tail, which is his recommendation in human eyes."

Well it kind of makes sense, these were from his notebooks after all. Though I do get that Mrs. Emerson killed the chicken for dinner at the Emerson household. Emerson, America's first and maybe only, thinker, was born on May 25, 1803.
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