One of Edgar Allan Poe's most famous works is the short story The Black Cat, but in real life he was owned by a beautiful tortoiseshell cat named Cattarina. Unfortunately cats weren't celebrated two centuries ago as they are today so facts about her life are few, but when I found out that one of my all-time favorite authors was owned by a tortie I started doing some digging. Today is Edgar Allan Poe's birthday, but the subject of this month's edition of The Purrfect 10 is the one and only Cattarina...
1) Historians believe Cattarina became a part of the Poe family (Edgar, his wife Virginia, and her mother Maria Clemm) in late 1839/early 1840 while they were living on Coates Street in Philadelphia.
2) Nicknames were popular in their home - Edgar was simply Eddie, he called his wife Sissy, and his mother-in-law was referred to as Muddy. Cattarina herself was sometimes called Catters or Kate, and her name has been spelled both with one T or two.
Drawing by Chas. Sheldon, image courtesy Poe Museum.
3) Edgar and Cattarina formed a very close bond. She reportedly preferred to eat from his hand, was depressed when he traveled, and enjoyed perching on his shoulder while he wrote, "purring as if in complacent approval of the work proceeding under [her] supervision,” according to one observation. (Hopefully she took lots of cat naps while he was writing The Black Cat!)
5) In 1840 Poe write an essay titled Instinct vs. Reason - A Black Cat in which he writes, "The writer of this article is the owner of one of the most remarkable black cats in the world..." and proceeds to tell the story of how she (presumably Cattarina) had figured out how to open a latched door using a series of perfectly timed movements.
6) In 1844 the Poes traveled to New York City, leaving Muddy and Cattarina behind while Edgar chased success in the American literary world. They stayed at a boarding house in Greenwich Village where the landlady provided such an impressive feast that he wrote home, "I wish Kate could see it - she would faint. You can't imagine how much we both do miss you. Sissy had a hearty cry last night, because you and Cattarina weren't here." Within the week he wrote a piece for the New York Sun about a transatlantic trip in a gas balloon titled "The Balloon Hoax" that earned him enough money to send for Muddy and Cattarina.
8) Poe's cause of death continues to be debated to this day, with one theory being that he died of rabies. Since Cattarina passed so shortly after, some wonder if he could he have contracted it from her. It's worth noting that there was no available vaccine for pets at the time.
9) Cattarina is the star of her very own cozy mystery series by Monica Shaughnessy, and also the subject of a short biography, Poe's Uncanny House Cat by Ed Sams.
10) Cattarina's legacy lives on! In November 2012 a trio of kittens were found on the grounds of the Poe Museum in Richmond, Virginia. Museum staff named them Edgar, Pluto (after the cat in The Black Cat), and Cattarina. Cattarina was adopted by a museum staffer, but Edgar and Pluto have become official mascots of the Poe Museum and can be visited there today. A fun interview with Edgar and Pluto can be found here.
