"SUFFERIN' CATS!"
ERB and the Domestic Feline
by Alan Hanson
“I once had a kitten and a bull calf who were boon companions.
When the calf lay down, the kitten would curl up between his forelegs.”
— Edgar Rice Burroughs, “Laugh It Off!”
in Hawaii Magazine, January 1946
That’s the only confirmation I’ve ever been able to find
that ERB owned a pet cat. His fiction gives the impression that he didn’t
particularly like domestic cats. Although his stories are filled with panthers,
leopards, lions, and saber-toothed tigers, I couldn’t find a single house
cat in any of his earthbound tales. In fact, I remember reading somewhere
years ago that Burroughs once shot at a cat on his property. Perhaps he
was the “friend” to whom Tom Billings referred in the following passage
from The Land That Time Forgot.
“Doubtless the battle would have gone to Chal-az even
though I had not interfered; but the moment that I saw a clean opening,
with no Kro-lu beyond, I raised my rifle and killed the beast (saber-toothed
tiger). When Chal-az arose, he glanced at the sky and remarked that it
looked like rain. The others already had resumed the march toward the village.
The incident was closed. For some unaccountable reason the whole thing
reminded me of a friend of mine who once shot a cat in his backyard. For
three weeks he talked of nothing else.”
Let’s take a look at how the author used the image of
the ordinary domestic house cat in his fiction. Although no actual such
cats appear in his stories, Burroughs used their image dozens of times
to help readers visualize the movements and emotions of his characters,
both human and animal.
“Catlike”
Burroughs often used the term “catlike”
to create similes comparing actions and thoughts of his characters to those
of earthly house cats. For example, in Tarzan of the Apes,
ERB noted an instance in which, “Tarzan, happily, was uninjured by the
fall, alighting catlike upon all fours far outspread to take up the shock.”
Some might suggest that it’s just as likely that ERB was
thinking of a large jungle cat, such as a panther, instead of a house cat
when he made that comparison. My sense, though, is that he usually had
domestic cats in mind when he used the term “catlike.” Consider
the following description of Sheeta the panther in The Beasts of
Tarzan.
“As if it had been poised upon steel springs, suddenly
released, it (Sheeta) rose quickly and silently to the top of the palisade,
disappearing, stealthily and catlike, into the dark space between the wall
and the back of an adjacent hut.”
Clearly Burroughs here was asking the reader to visualize
the panther’s movements as being similar to those of the type of cat with
which the reader was probably most familiar — a domestic house cat. It’s
reasonable to assume that the author was asking the reader to make the
same comparison on most all other occasions when he used the term “catlike.”
Tarzan was the character whose movements Burroughs most
often compared to a cat. Following are some examples.
“As on the former occasion he overthrew the cauldron
before leaping, sinuous and catlike, into the lower branches of the forest
giant.” (Tarzan of the Apes)
“The sentry’s back was toward him. Like a cat Tarzan
crept upon the dozing man.” (The Return of Tarzan)
“He (Taug) made a sudden lunge for Tarzan, but the
ape-boy leaped nimbly to one side, eluding him, and with the quickness
of a cat wheeled and leaped back again to close quarters.” (Jungle
Tales of Tarzan)
“With the quickness of a cat Tarzan swung the king
ape (Go-lat) over one hip and sent him sprawling to the ground.” (Tarzan
the Untamed)
“On either hand they fell before his cudgel; so rapid
the delivery of his blows, so catlike his recovery that in the first few
moments of the battle he seemed invulnerable to their attack.” (Tarzan
the Terrible)
“Pan-at-lee trembled. This was no Ho-don and though
she feared the Ho-don she feared this thing more, with its catlike crouch
and its beastly growls.” (Tarzan the Terrible)
“Catlike, from his squatting position, the man leaped
to one side even as the great tree crashed to earth.” (Tarzan
and the Leopard Men)
“As Clayton followed the bell boy toward the elevator,
the young man watched him, noting the tall figure, the broad shoulders,
and the free, yet cat-like stride.” (Tarzan and the Lion Man)
Many other Burroughs characters moved and acted catlike.
Not surprisingly, Tarzan’s son was one. In Tarzan the Terrible,
Korak “leaped, catlike, hither and thither in the course of his victorious
duels.” In The Warlord of Mars, John Carter described
his vision and his movement in catlike terms. “As I stood in the dark
shadow of the tunnel’s end racking my brain for a feasible plan the while
I watched, catlike, the old man’s every move.” And in the same story:
“With a mighty catlike bound I sprang upward toward the slender strand
— the only avenue which yet remained that could carry me to my vanishing
love.” The Warlord’s son was catlike, as well. “Carthoris, still
clasping Thuvia lightly to his breast, came to the ground catlike upon
his feet, breaking the shock for the girl.”
An assortment of other Burroughs characters, stretching
across his wide-ranging fiction, also had catlike characteristics. Billy
Byrne was one. “Through a second and third hut he made his precarious
way. In the fourth a man stirred as Byrne stood upon the opposite side
of the room from the door — with a catlike bound the mucker was beside
him.” Another was Bradley in The Land That Time Forgot.
“With all the quickness of a cat, Bradley sprang to his feet and with
all his great strength, backed by his heavy weight, struck the Weiroo upon
the point of the chin.”
Even some of ERB’s cave men were as nimble as a cat. Nu
in The Eternal Lover “cat-like leaped into the lower branches
… reveling in the ease with which he could travel from tree to tree.”
Thander, the Boston wussy turned cave man in The Cave Girl,
ran up a sapling “with the noiseless celerity of a cat,” and later
“swung downward, clinging to the rafter with his hands, and dropped,
cat-like, upon his naked feet to the floor.” In Savage Pellucidar,
another cave man learned how hazardous it could be to grab a cat that doesn’t
want to be held. “He seized O-aa and lifted her in his arms. He pressed
his lips to hers. She awakened with a start. With the speed and viciousness
of a cat, she struck — she struck him once across the mouth with her hand,
and then her dagger sprang from its sheath.”
Certainly the large jungle cats shared some characteristics
with their diminutive domestic cousins, but Burroughs also endowed other
species in Tarzan’s world with catlike traits. Although his favorite term
to describe the great apes in motion was “lumbering,” ERB at times
gave them the agility of a cat. Remember Taug, Tarzan’s loyal Mangani friend
in Jungle Tales of Tarzan? “Like a cat the heavy anthropoid
scampered up the bole of his sanctuary, Numa’s talons missing him by little
more than inches.” And in Tarzan the Untamed, “With
the agility of a cat Zu-tag leaped completely over the protecting wall.”
Most surprising, though, is Burroughs’ description of
Tantor the elephant as catlike, not just once or twice, but three times
in the following passage from The Son of Tarzan.
“Tantor wheeled around like a cat, hurled Malbihn to
the earth and kneeled upon him with the quickness of cat … The ape-man
… signaled the beast to approach and lift him to its head, and Tantor came
as he was bid, docile as a kitten, and hoisted The Killer tenderly aloft.”
Feline Expressions
Burroughs used a number of common house
cat expressions to create imagery in his fiction. For instance, folklore
contends that “a cat has nine lives.” ERB made use of this myth
several times. First, in Tarzan and the Golden Lion, the
conspirator Kraski applied it to Owaza, the unscrupulous safari headman.
“He’s as crooked as they make ’em, and if he were to be hanged for all
his murders, he’d have to have more lives than a cat.” Then in Tarzan
and the Forbidden City, the braggart guide Wolff was referring
to Tarzan when he said, “The damn monkey has as many lives as a cat.”
And, after shooting the evil Hal Colby dead in The Bandit of Hell’s
Bend, Bull declared, “He kin rot here fer all I care. God, I
wisht he had nine lives like a cat, so’s I could kill him a few more times.”
Everyone knows that “curiosity killed the cat.”
ERB also used that image a couple of times in his fiction. In The
War Chief, Lieutenant King wondered how the Apache Shoz-dijiji
had gotten possession of Wichita Billings’ pony. “What’s consuming me
is curiosity,” he told the girl. “That’s what killed the cat,”
she responded in an effort to discourage the officer from pursuing the
question. Then in Escape on Venus, Carson Napier had reason
to recall that same earthly feline expression.
“The gossip of the slave compound and the guardroom had
reached the ears of Tyros, and his curiosity had been aroused to see the
strange slave with yellow hair who had defied nobles and warriors. It was
curiosity that killed the cat, but I feared it might work with reverse
English in this instance. However, the summons offered a break in the monotony
of my existence and an opportunity to see Tyros the Bloody.”
Burroughs used another cat image in Tarzan of the
Apes. The impractical Samuel T. Philander, secretary to Professor
Porter, tried to climb onto the roof of Tarzan’s cabin to escape what he
thought was an approaching lion. (It was actually Jane.) “For a moment
he hung there, clawing with his feet like a cat on a clothesline, but presently
a piece of the thatch came away, and Mr. Philander, preceding it, was precipitated
upon his back.”
When Tom Billings and Ajor, his traveling companion and
later wife in The Land That Time Forgot, met a stranger,
ERB used a cat concept to explain how a friendly relationship developed.
“At first Ajor and So-al were like a couple of stranger cats on a back
fence but soon they began to accept each other under something of an armed
truce, and later became fast friends.”
The feline image that Burroughs used most often in fiction,
however, was “cat and mouse” interaction. I found 16 examples of
that metaphor in ERB’s stories. Here are just a few examples, starting
with Tarzan’s handling of the cad Canler, Jane’s fiancé at the time.
“Another hand shot to his throat and in a moment he
was being shaken high above the floor, as a cat might shake a mouse.”
— Tarzan of the Apes
“Wait,” said Nemone. “I would know more of this
man,” and then she turned to Tarzan. “So you came to kill me!”
Her voice was smooth, almost caressing. At the moment the woman reminded
Tarzan of a cat that is playing with its victim. — Tarzan and the
City of Gold
“Presently Belthar gave [Jad-bal-ja] an opening; and
his great jaws closed upon the throat of the hunting lion of Nemone, jaws
that drove mighty fangs through the thick mane of his adversary, through
hide and flesh deep into the jugular of Belthar; then he braced his feet
and shook Belthar as a cat might shake a mouse, breaking his neck.”
— Tarzan and the City of Gold
“Kill him, Julian,” said mother. “Kill the murderer
of your father.” I did not need her appeal to influence me, for the
moment that I had seen Peter (Johansen) there I knew my long awaited time
had come to kill him. He commenced to cry then — great tears ran down his
cheeks and he bolted for the door and tried to escape. It was my pleasure
to play with him as a cat plays with a mouse. — The Moon Maid
Feline Senses
Since survival in Tarzan’s Africa required
keen senses, it’s not surprising that Burroughs occasionally used the acute
senses of cats to make comparisons. In Tarzan’s Quest, he
went into some detail in describing the eyes of cats.
“The perception of the eyes of man is normally in a
horizontal plane, while those of the cat family, with their vertical pupils,
detect things above them far more quickly than would a man. Perhaps this
is because for ages the cat family has hunted its prey in trees, and even
though the lion no longer does so, he still has the eyes of his smaller
progenitors.”
ERB even worked cat vision into the dialogue in The
Bandit of Hell’s Bend. The widow Mary Donovan berated the sheriff
for his failure to apprehend an outlaw. “‘I suppose ye got ’em, Gum
Smith,’ said Mrs. Donovan, with sarcasm, ‘or ye wouldn’t be back this soon.’
‘A ain’t no cat, Mrs. Donovan,’ said the sheriff, on the defensive, ‘to
see in the dark.’”
Although cats speak no language, they do use their voices
to convey meaning. In Jungle Tales of Tarzan, Burroughs contrasted
the sounds made by a lion and its smaller domestic cousin to highlight
the difference between life in the wild versus life in the city.
“It was with a sigh of relief that he finally reached
a point from which he could no longer hear them, and finding a comfortable
crotch high among the trees, composed himself for a night of dreamless
slumber, while a prowling lion moaned and coughed beneath him, and in far-off
England the other Lord Greystoke, with the assistance of a valet, disrobed
and crawled between spotless sheets, swearing irritably as a cat meowed
beneath his window.”
Meanwhile, far across the void from Tarzan’s jungle bed,
a vicious Barsoomian lion voiced an earthly cat sound to affirm its submission
to Thuvia, Maid of Mars. “The beast ceased its growling.
With lowered head and catlike purr, it came slinking to the girl’s feet.”
For their own purposes, humans can mimic cat sounds to
convey meaning, as the kind-hearted crook, the Lizard, suggested while
pitching a safe-cracking scheme to Jimmy Torrance in The Efficiency
Expert.
“‘Cracking a box?’ asked Jimmy, grinning.
‘It might be something like that,’ replied the Lizard; ‘but you won’t
have nothin’ to do but stand where I put you and make a noise like a cat
if you see anybody coming.’”
Before moving on to other types of cat references in ERB’s
fiction, let’s look at a few miscellaneous feline similes and metaphors
the author also used. While von Horst watched a band of bison men confront
a mammoth in Back to the Stone Age, he likened the prehistoric
elephant’s strategy to that of an outer crust cat. “He did not let any
of them get behind him again. He moved slowly toward them, reminding von
Horst of a huge cat stalking a bird.”
In Tarzan the Terrible, ERB explained, “With
Mo-sar as the cat’s-paw,” Lu-don was confident his plan to kill Ko-tan,
king of Pal-ul-don’s Ho-dons, would succeed. (A “cat’s-paw” is a
person who is used by another, usually to carry out a dangerous task.)
In the following passage from Savage Pellucidar,
Burroughs used the term “hydrophobia,” which has two meanings. It
is an archaic name for the disease “rabies,” and it can also mean
an irrational fear of water. I’m guessing that Burroughs was thinking of
the disease in this simile.
“Dragging O-aa was like dragging a cat with hydrophobia;
O-aa didn’t drag worth a cent. She pulled back; she bit; she scratched;
she kicked, and when she wasn’t biting, she was emitting a stream of vitriolic
vituperation.”
Burroughs was probably remembering one of his own horses
when he included the following metaphor voiced by Grace Evans in The Girl
From Hollywood. “Senator is clumsy enough at jumping, but no matter what
happens he always lights on his feet. Mother says he part cat.”
Kinds of Cats
Domestic cats come in all sizes and
colors, and while most live their lives as pets, some roam free. ERB made
reference to many different kinds of cats, based on their age, color, disposition,
and domestic status. All cats, of course, start out as kittens, and Burroughs
made a handful of comments about infant cats. In The Eternal Lover,
the author used a kitten to help his readers visualize a prehistoric tiger.
“For a moment (Nu) was lost to view within the cave,
but presently he emerged, in one hand … the severed head of an enormous
beast, which more nearly resembled the royal tiger of Asia than it did
any other beast, though that resemblance was little closer than is the
resemblance of the Royal Bengal to a house kitten.”
In The Deputy Sheriff of Comanche County,
Burroughs twice referred to a horse being “gentle as a kitten.”
Then in Llana of Gathol, John Carter admitted that for a
time he felt like a mother feline. “The constant strain of feeling that
unseen eyes may be upon you, and that unseen ears may be listening to your
every word was commencing to tell upon me; and I was becoming as nervous
as a cat with seven kittens.”
Burroughs made several references to a “tabby,”
a domestic cat that has a coat featuring distinctive stripes, dots, lines,
or swirling patterns. Of Sheeta, the panther that bonded with the ape-man
in The Beasts of Tarzan, ERB noted, “That it felt real
affection for him there seemed little doubt, for now that the blacks were
disposed of it walked slowly back and forth about the stake rubbing its
sides against the ape-man’s legs and purring like a contented tabby.”
In Tarzan the Untamed, another panther stood its ground against
a lion, “with arched back and snarling face, for all the world like
a great, spotted tabby.”
After falling from a tree in Tarzan of the Apes,
Professor Porter “rolled over upon his stomach; gingerly he bowed his
back until he resembled a huge tom cat in proximity to a yelping dog.”(Obviously,
Burroughs here was thinking of a scared domestic male cat and not the slang
meaning of a “tom cat” as a sexually aggressive man.)
The Queen of England touched on the perils of a vagrant
cat when she told the Outlaw of Torn, “You be a strange
knight that thinks so lightly on saving a queen’s life that you ride on
without turning your head, as though you had but driven a pack of curs
from annoying a stray cat.” John Carter and a fellow captive were made
to feel like a couple of homeless cats by their Morgor captors in Skeleton
Men of Jupiter. “We were held here for quite some time, during
which some of the warriors discussed us as one might discuss a couple of
stray alley cats.”
Cat Insults
A century ago, calling someone a “cat”
must have been a common put-down, as Burroughs used it occasionally in
his fiction. In Tarzan and the Lion Man, actress Naomi Madison
said to her stand-in, Rhonda Terry, “I don’t see how you can be so decent
to me. I used to treat you so rotten. I acted like a dirty little cat.”
And in Marcia of the Doorstep (written in 1924), when Patsy
Kellar told Jack Chase that Marcia and Banks van Spiddle were engaged because
she loved Jack, who was showing interest in Marcia, van Spiddle called
Patsy a “nasty little cat.” (Such melodrama!)
A couple of Burroughs characters intensified the insult
by adding a modifier. In Tarzan and the City of Gold, the
noble Erot spoke behind Queen Nemone’s back, “The hell-cat! May the
devil get her in the end.” And Phoros, usurper of the crown in Athne,
the City of Ivory, made a premature announcement concerning his wife’s
health: “Menfora, the old Hell-cat, is dead.”
In Tarzan and the Lion Man, Burroughs used
another exclamatory cat expression. It wasn’t an insult, but rather a sudden
fearful utterance.
“From somewhere out in the night came the roar of a
lion and a moment later a blood-curdling cry that seemed neither that of
beast nor man. ‘Sufferin’ cats!’ ejaculated O’Grady. ‘What was that?”
Cats on Mars
Although Burroughs never introduced
an earthly domestic house cat character in his fiction, he did, indirectly,
include an extraterrestrial one. When John Carter inquired about why Dejah
Thoris was avoiding him in A Princess of Mars, he first learned
that red Martians had a kind of pet cat.
“‘She says you have angered her, and that is all she
will say, except that she is the daughter of a jed and the granddaughter
of a jeddak and she has been humiliated by a creature who could not polish
the teeth of her grandmother’s sorak.’
“I pondered over this report for some time, finally
asking. ‘What might a sorak be, Sola?’
“‘A little animal about as big as my hand, which the
red Martian women keep to play with,’ explained Sola.
“Not fit to polish the teeth of her grandmother’s cat!
I must rank pretty low in the consideration of Dejah Thoris, I thought;
but I could not help laughing at the strange figure of speech, so homely
and in this respect so earthly.”
It wasn’t until decades later in Llana of Gathol
that Burroughs gave a more detailed description of a sorak. “A sorak
is a little six-legged, cat-like animal, kept as a pet by many Martian
women.” The name of the sorak belonging to Dejah Thoris’ grandmother
is never given, nor does that sorak, or any other, make a physical appearance
in ERB’s Martian stories.
In the same way the term “cat” could be an insult
on earth, so could the term “sorak” be on Barsoom. In The
Gods of Mars, a Black Pirate used the term to insult another of
his race. “Thurid turned toward Xodar, his eyes narrowing to two nasty
slits. Ever did I think you carried the heart of a sorak in your putrid
breast. Often have you bested me in the secret councils of Issus, but now
in the field of war where men are truly gauged your scabby heart hath revealed
its sores to all the world.” And in Synthetic Men of Mars,
one of Ras Thavas’ creations insulted him. “They call you The Master
Mind of Mars! Phooey! You haven’t the brains of a sorak.”
Burroughs made a final reference to a Martian cat in Llana
of Gathol. In Kamtol two Black Pirates argued over the amount of
a wager between them. “I want to make more than enough to feed my wife’s
sorak,” one declared.
The Cat-People of Thuria
ERB’s greatest tribute to domestic
cats can be found in “The Cat-Man,” chapter 17 of The Swords
of Mars. On the Martian moon Thuria, John Carter encountered the
Masenas, a chameleon-like cat-people race. His first contact with the Masenas
came when he was imprisoned with the cat-man Umka. Carter provided a description
of his cellmate, whom he called, “the most amazing of all the amazing
creatures that I have ever seen.”
“The shape of his skull was similar to that of a human
being, but his features were most inhuman. In the center of his forehead
was a single, large eye about three inches in diameter; the pupil a vertical
slit, like the pupils of a cat’s eyes.”
When the Masena first tried to communicate with Carter,
from his mouth came sounds “like the purring and meowing of a cat.”
When Carter shook his head, the creature “ceased its meowing” and
spoke to the Warlord in a more human language.
Umka told Carter that his people lived in houses built
high in the trees of the forest. They were hunting beasts, and Carter saw
an extraordinary demonstration of their predatory instincts and tactics
when their captors brought food to the cell for the Masena. It was
a bird in a cage.
“For a moment or two he played with the bird in the
cage … He seemed to derive a great deal of pleasure from this, as he purred
constantly. Finally he opened the door in the cage and liberated the captive
… Then my companion commenced to stalk it, for all the world like a cat
stalking its prey. When the thing alighted, he would creep stealthily upon
it; and when he was close enough, pounce for it.
“For some time it succeeded in eluding him; but finally
he struck it down heavily to the floor, partially stunning it. After this
he played with it, pawing it around. Occasionally he would leave it and
move about the room pretending that he did not see it. Presently he would
seem to discover it anew, and then he would rush for it and pounce upon
it.
“At last, with a hideous coughing roar that sounded
like the roar of a lion, he leaped ferociously upon it and severed its
head with a single bite of his powerful upper mouth … He paid no attention
to me during all these proceedings; and now, purring lazily, he walked
over to the pile of skins and cloths upon the floor and lying down upon
them curled up and went to sleep.”
Conclusion
I like to think that, when Edgar Rice
Burroughs fired that shot at a cat on his property, he fired to frighten
and not to kill. As a cat owner for the last 35 years, I’ve come to believe
that my pet felines have souls as surely as humans do. Several of my pet
cats have lived out their lives with my family and have been buried reverently
on our property.
In many review articles on various topics in ERB’s fiction,
I’ve often chosen to give Burroughs the final word. And so, for this one
on domestic cats, here’s a passage from Tarzan and the Forbidden
City. In it the author offers an alternate way of paying tribute
to furry and loveable pet cats when they pass on.
“Wong poured a cupful of the concoction he had brewed
and handed it to Lal task. ‘Dlink!’ he said. Lal task took a sip, made
a wry face, and spat it out. ‘I can’t drink that nasty stuff,’ he said.
‘What’s in it?—dead cats?’ ‘Only li’l bit dead cat,’ said Wong.”
—the end—
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