Advice from C. S. Lewis ("Get a Cat")

No cat report today, since I'm in Milwaukee, but thought I'd share something I came across recently while looking up something else in that vast, fascinating compendium that is the COLLECTED LETTERS OF C. S. LEWIS.   Here's a bit of advice CSL gave his oldest friend, Arthur Greeves, when the latter's dog ("my old friend Peter") was in his final decline:

"P.S.  Get a cat. They're more suitable to us old people than dogs, and a cat makes a house a home."*
I found this striking, coming from a lifetime dog lover like Lewis; clearly he had been won over by his step-cat (that is, his wife's cat, whose name I don't even think we know); a Siamese, I think.

So here's a good tag-line I may add to some of my letters:

"a cat makes a house a home" — C. S. Lewis
--JDR

current reading: Echo-Hawk, Wodehouse, Boorman, Jenkins, Howard


*COLLECTED LETTERS, Vol. III, p. 1139; letter of March 12th 1960