'The Indulgence With Which He Treated Hodge'

We had our cat, Hurricane – always “Cane” -- euthanized on Wednesday. He was roughly fourteen and a half years old, entered our lives as a stray and will remain in memory as the most affectionate and prickly cat I have ever known. All of his emotions were extreme. He hated the dog, Luke, and slept with us every night. He once bit my hand so deeply I had to see a doctor, who shot me full of antibiotics and stitched up the tear.

His kidneys were failing. For months we’ve given him oral meds and pumped him as often as possible with subcutaneous fluids. Nothing helped. For the last week he had spent most of his days and nights in a cardboard box beside our bed. I hardly recognized him. Naturally, I thought of Hodge, the most famous cat in all of literature. Here is Boswell’s account in his Life:

“I never shall forget the indulgence with which he treated Hodge, his cat: for whom he himself used to go out and buy oysters, lest the servants having that trouble should take a dislike to the poor creature. I am, unluckily, one of those who have an antipathy to a cat, so that I am uneasy when in the room with one; and I own, I frequently suffered a good deal from the presence of this same Hodge. I recollect him one day scrambling up Dr. Johnson's breast, apparently with much satisfaction, while my friend smiling and half-whistling, rubbed down his back, and pulled him by the tail; and when I observed he was a fine cat, saying, ‘Why yes, Sir, but I have had cats whom I liked better than this;’ and then as if perceiving Hodge to be out of countenance, adding, ‘but he is a very fine cat, a very fine cat indeed.’

“This reminds me of the ludicrous account which he gave Mr. Langton, of the despicable state of a young Gentleman of good family. ‘Sir, when I heard of him last, he was running about town shooting cats.’ And then in a sort of kindly reverie, he bethought himself of his own favorite cat, and said, `But Hodge shan’t be shot; no, no, Hodge shall not be shot.’”

Hodge’s renown grew when Nabokov used the second of Boswell’s paragraphs as the epigraph to Pale Fire. The passage differentiates the characters of Boswell and Johnson, and explains my preference for the latter. Boswell admits to an “antipathy” to cats, while Johnson, like any good-hearted person, feels only “indulgence” for Hodge, and experiences “a sort of kindly reverie” when thinking of his cat. To their eternal credit, the English have commemorated a bronze statue of Hodge in front of the house he shared with Johnson.

Cane was “a very fine cat, a very fine cat indeed.”