The Importance of Play: And Why the Naming of Cats Is a Difficult Matter
“A child who does not play is not a child,” said Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, “but the man who does not play has lost forever the child who lived within him and who he will miss terribly.”
I was reminded of this the other day while rummaging through some books and chancing upon T S Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. One of my favourite books when I was a child, it’s lost none of its magic. It’s a delightful, and playful, celebration of cats. Of their inscrutability, perversity and independence.
T S Eliot bestrides 20th-century literature like a colossus. He was a key figure in the development of ‘Modernism’, the avant-garde cultural movement that emerged in the early years of the century. Which, seeking to come to terms with the horrors of the First World War, represented an attempt to find new ways of capturing experience and identity, experimenting with new forms of language and expression. Eliot’s influence on generations of later poets is immense.
This is where I’ve got a confession to make. I actually prefer the subversive humour of Practical Cats to the high seriousness of The Waste Land or The Hollow Men.
Originally written in the late 1930s as a series of letters to his godchildren, it’s an absolute delight.
The set of fourteen poems is written in the English tradition of nonsense poetry. And the first one, “The Naming of Cats”, sets the tone:
The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn't just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I'm as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
There's the family name. Sensible everyday names like Peter, Augustus, Alonzo or James. Or fancier names such as Plato, Admetus, Electra and Demeter. There are more dignified names, such as Munkustrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat. And, finally, there is:
The name that no human research can discover—
But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.
When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular Name.
We’re introduced to the Old Gumbie Cat, who keeps the mice in order.
The curious perversity of the Rum Tum Tugger, who is, “always on the wrong side of every door”:
If you offer him pheasant he would rather have grouse,
If you put him in a house he would much prefer a flat,
If you put him in a flat then he'd rather have a house.
If you set him on a mouse then he only wants a rat,
If you set him on a rat then he'd rather chase a mouse.
Mr. Mistoffoles, the Original Conjuring Cat. Macavity, a feline master criminal who is the bafflement of Scotland Yard. Bustopher Jones, the cat about town and arbiter of feline fashion. Skimbleshanks, who supervises the Night Mail. Old Deuteronomy, who’s lived forever and mustn’t, under any circumstances, be disturbed.
And, finally, we’re instructed on how to “ad-dress a cat”. We’re reminded that “A CAT IS NOT A DOG”. That we shouldn’t speak till we’re spoken to. That we must avoid familiarity. Offer them tokens of esteem. And treat them with respect:
And so in time you reach your aim,
And finally call him by his NAME.
The poems offer a wonderful insight into the diverse personalities of these inquisitive, aloof, playful and contrary creatures. And remind us that cats, unlike dogs, do not belong to humans. Humans, instead, belong to their cats.
Not only are these practical cats. Doing something with a purpose. Eliot is also suggesting they provide an analogue for human behaviour:
You now have learned enough to see
That Cats are much like you and me
And other people whom we find
Possessed of various types of mind.
For some are sane and some are mad
And some are good and some are bad
And some are better, some are worse—
But all may be described in verse.
Eliot reminds us of the importance of play. Silly rhymes, make-believe and nonsense talk come naturally to us when we're young. They should still form an important role in our lives as we grow older.
There’s also a serious side to his playfulness. Eliot was given the nickname "Old Possum" by his fellow modernist poet Ezra Pound. As the cover illustration shows, drawn by Eliot, Old Possum was providing his feline friends with a ladder to climb over an otherwise insurmountable wall.
And us with an opportunity to play with experience, step outside ourselves and dream other lives.
Published in October 1939, this might, of course, not be unconnected with the storm clouds which were gathering in Europe at the time.