The Clever Cat

There was a cat called William –
The poorest ever seen;
He would not go a-mousing –
He played the tambourine.

His family would not feed him –
This lazy little cat –
But out of doors they turned him;
There seemed no way but that.

So on and on he wandered
Till he to Catland came,
And there he met a princess –
Felina was her name.

She had the loveliest whiskers;
Her eyes were emerald green.
She fell in love with William –
All for his tambourine!

For her delight was dancing
And there was none to play.
‘Strike up!’ she straight commanded
When William came that way.

All day she danced. At sunset
Poor William at her feet
Fell down and said, ‘Pray may I
Have something now to eat?’

‘To eat? Of course – What ho, there!’
(Felina had no bell,
But when she called her servants
Her sweet voice did as well.)

Then tortoiseshells and tabbies
Tripped o’er each other’s tails;
All scurrying from the kitchen
With cream cakes and stewed snails.

Now after this they brought him
Six dinners every day –
And ‘mouse’ was never mentioned.
His brothers came to stay.

For they had heard of Catland
Where William’s word was law.
And by-and-by Felina
Bestowed on him her paw.

There is a cat called William –
The fattest ever seen;
He need not go a-mousing –
He plays the tambourine!

This week’s poem is by the Scottish-Australian poet, Mary Hannay Foott, 1846-1918. It’s from the Poems for Children section of Foott’s 1890 collection, Morna Lee and Other Poems.

Foott, Glasgow-born, arrived with her parents in Melbourne, Australia, in 1853. Her education included teacher training and art school. Besides her career in education, she achieved success as a journalist, becoming social and literary editor of the Queenslander in 1884. She remains best known for her poems in the Bush ballad genre, particularly the mysterious romantic narrative, Where the Pelican Builds.

I chose The Clever Cat because I find it an excellent piece of light verse, and a children’s poem ahead of its time in its humour and avoidance of moralising. (I like cats too, of course.) If there’s a message in the poem, it’s the opposite of a homily about the virtues of working hard and earning points for self-sacrifice.

William, as he first appears, is no paragon and no pet: he’s expected by his human family to earn his keep, and their comfort, by mousing, and they turn him out of the house when he fails. The narrator acknowledges he’s “a lazy little cat” but makes sure readers register his unlikely talent, comical and charming at the same time: He played the tambourine. Dogged but directionless, he wanders on until he chances on the feline Fairyland, Catland, and its equivalent Fairy Queen, the seductively whiskered, imperious, dance-mad Felina. The subsequent romance is based on a pragmatic notion of exchange: Felina wants to dance, William wants to eat.

Foott’s narrative moves in swift trimeters, with little shafts of descriptive detail which reveal more about the characters than is directly said. Is Felina’s voice truly “sweet” in the ears of her scurrying serving-cats? If “William’s word” is law how has the power-shift worked so well in his favour, and will it always? As in the original anthropomorphic genre, the fable, human behaviour is revealed, unidealised, but strongly urged towards the ideal. William is engaging because he’s fat and lazy, and because he has a talent. He simply plays and eats, and makes himself (and Felina) happy.

Humour often glints in the asides to the reader, such as “And ‘mouse’ was never mentioned.” Especially likable is the fact that these asides assume the child’s intelligence. The (generally) direct modern diction owes something to the writer’s journalistic training – and perhaps her work as a teacher – bringing a tone into the children’s genre that is straight-talking but not straight-faced. At a deeper level, I suspect a gentle rebuff aimed by the author at the paternal Presbyterian influence on her childhood. How triumphantly she insists in the last verse that there really is a cat called William. Of course there is, and of course he – or she – plays the tambourine.