PUSSIES GALORE!!

By: Kenji

Switchboard Operator (Makavejev)

Bringing up Baby (Hawks)

Missing from this site:

Leopold the Cat
De Poes/The Cat (Van der Keuken)

Falling Cat (first screen cat, 1890)

Private Life of a Cat (Hammid)- in full!

Walk on the Wild Side (Dmytryk)- credits sequence

The Long Goodbye (Altman)

Story of the Cat and the Moon (Serrazina)

The Sick Kitten (Smith)

Cat Listening to Music (Marker)

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BEYOND FILMS:

The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five pound note.
The Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar,
‘O lovely Pussy! O Pussy my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are,
You are,
You are!
What a beautiful Pussy you are!’
_~

Hiroshige: Celebration of the Cock Festival in the Ricefields near Asakusa

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I once read an article by a woman in The Guardian complaining about the negative screen portrayals of cats (either evil or mistreated), linked to male sexism and racism and the general mistreatment of women! Well, she was concentrating mainly on Hollywood but in fact a lot of these films are positive. Still, there is cruelty to cats in Satantango (Hungary), Dogtooth (Greece),Bad Boy Bubby (Australia) among others.

Gwen John: Young Woman Holding a Black Cat
_~

Harold Munro: Milk for the Cat

When the tea is brought at five o’clock,
And all the neat curtains are drawn with care,
The little black cat with bright green eyes,
Is suddenly purring there.

At first she pretends, having nothing to do,
She has come in merely to blink by the grate;
But, though tea may be late or the milk may be sour,
She is never late.

And presently her agate eyes,
Take a soft large milky haze,
And her independent casual glance,
Becomes a stiff hard gaze.

Then she stamps her claws or lifts her ears,
Or twists her tail and begins to stir,
Till suddenly all her lithe body becomes,
One breathing trembling purr.

The children eat and wriggle and laugh;
The two old ladies stroke their silk:
But the cat is grown small and thin with desire,
Transformed to a creeping lust for milk.

The white saucer like some full moon descends,
At last from the clouds of the table above;
She sighs and dreams and thrills and glows,
Transfigured with love.

She nestles over the shining rim,
Buries her chin in the creamy sea;
Her tail hangs loose; each drowsy paw
Is doubled under each bending knee.

A long dim ecstacy holds her life;
Her world is an infinite shapeless white,
Till her tongue has curled the last holy drop,
Then she sinks back into the night.

Draws and dips her body to heap,
Her sleepy nerves in the great arm-chair,
Lies defeated and buried deep,
Three or four hours unconscious there.

Charles Baudelaire: Cats

Feverish lovers, scholars in their lofts,
Both come in their due time to love the cat;
Gentle but powerful, king of the parlor mat,
Lazy, like them, and sensitive to draughts.

Your cat, now, linked to learning and to love,
Exhibits a taste for silences and gloom—
Would make a splendid messenger of doom
If his fierce pride would condescend to serve.

Lost in his day-dream, he assumes the pose
Of sphinxes in the desert, languidly
Fixed in a reverie that has no end.

His loins are lit with the fires of alchemy,
And bits of gold, small as the finest sand,
Fleck, here and there, the mystery of his eyes.

(translation)