Review: Jeoffry The Poet's Cat by Oliver Soden

Jeoffrey The Poet’s Cat by Oliver Soden

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


What a wonderful little book! Oliver Soden imagines what life might have been like for the cat famously adopted by 18th century poet Christopher Smart during his confinement in a mental asylum (for a condition that would nowadays most likely be diagnosed as bi-polar disorder).
'For I Will Consider my Cat Jeoffry' is the best-known section of Smart's long religious poem 'Jubilate Agno' (Rejoice in the Lamb); rediscovered in 1938, it has been widely anthologised, set to music by Benjamin Britten and described as 'the greatest tribute to a feline ever written'.

'For I am possessed of a Cat, surpassing in beauty, from whom I take occasion to praise Almighty God', writes Smart elsewhere in his poem; and here Soden, a fellow cat lover, imagines a life for Jeoffry starting, appropriately enough in a 'Cattery' (ie a brothel) and ending in Devon in the house of a (fictional) Mrs Ramm who takes care of him when poor Christopher Smart is finally committed to a debtor's prison. It's a good long life spanning twenty-two years, and Joeffry's adventures are many and various, including an encounter with another famous historical cat, Samuel Johnson's Hodge - an encounter that could well have happened in real life, as the two literary gentlemen were friends. Other, more obviously fictional encounters feature renowned actor David Garrick, novelist Fanny Burney, a young boy by the name of Sam Coleridge, and even, briefly His Majesty King George II.

Described by Mrs Ramm as 'all over stripes, & the colour of autumn leaves', Joeffry is vividly brought to life in all his moods and situations, and his eventual demise, on Mrs Ramm's lap where he creeps to take his final breaths, is so tenderly described that I defy any cat-lover not to shed a tear. A beautiful read.



View all my reviews