Showing posts with label cat songs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cat songs. Show all posts

Thursday, January 4, 2018

Grimalkin is his name





































Grimalkin

My cat is such a mouser (oh dear me!)
He catches more than Towser
He sneaks along the floor, you know
And hides behind the door, and so
Grimalkin is his name!

A mouse comes up a-creeping (oh dear me!)
He thinks the cat is sleeping
He's snoring surely, but you know
His left eye isn't shut, and so
He's watching all the same!

Purr-haps you've guessed what followed (oh dear me!)
That little mouse was swallowed
I'll tell you now what happened then
Grimalkin took a nap and then
Poor Towser got the blame!


A grimalkin (also called a greymalkin) is an archaic term for a cat. The term stems from "grey" (the colour) plus "malkin", an archaic term with several meanings (a cat, a low class woman, a weakling, a mop or a name) derived from a hypocoristic form of the female name Maud. Scottish legend makes reference to the grimalkin as a faery cat that dwells in the highlands.





Nostradamus the French prophet & astrologer, 1503-1566, had a cat named Grimalkin.

A cat named Grimalkin in William Shakespeare‘s 1606 play MacBeth helped the three blind witches look into Macbeth’s future.


During the early modern period, the name grimalkin – and cats in general – became associated with the devil and witchcraft. Women tried as witches in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries were often accused of having a familiar, frequently a grimalkin. A noted example is the familiar of one of the three witches in Macbeth. - Wikipedia





I first saw the name Grimalkin in a favorite childhood book of mine, King of the Wind by Marguerite Henry. This is a heavily fictionalized story about the Godolphin Arabian, one of the founding sires of the Thoroughbred breed. A fabulously prized Arab stallion named Sham is shipped to England from Arabia, a gift from some sultan-or-other - oh, let's get to the good part, shall we? Like most fairy tale characters, Sham loses his royal status and must endure many trials (not unlike Anna Sewell's Black Beauty, which Marguerite Henry no doubt read many times), including toiling as a humble cart-horse under the whip. Luckily the Earl of Godolphin intervenes in time, knowing a good piece of horseflesh when he sees one. In a wildly-unrealistic scene, Sham and Lady Roxana, an immaculate white mare primed to breed with the evil stallion Hobgoblin, break away from their handlers and elope. The Thoroughbred breed results. 


Grimalkin is a supporting character who isn't even in the book for very long, but like most cats, he makes the best of his part and gladly accompanies Agba (the little Arab horseboy) and Sham into exile, making the best of things at Wicken Fen. The brilliant illustrator Wesley Dennis had a talent, if not genius, for conveying motion, the fluid natural movements of dogs and horses and even cats. His subjects always seemed just about to do something: Dennis knew what, and conveyed it without even having to show it. 

The legendary horse-artist sketched this wee sleekit feline in the most fey, ghostlike poses, using just a few strokes of the pencil. Usually he was perched on the back or neck or rump of the hero, like so:




The song is something I learned in school, and it popped into my head today in the way long-forgotten songs suddenly will. I couldn't find one thing about it on the internet, which is rare - until I found some obscure message board from 2001 that quoted the lyrics, mostly correctly. This is the only place I've seen Towser as a dog name - usually it's Bowser, though who knows where THAT one got started. 




The complicated, twisting, braided strands of the name Grimalkin are about as weirdly mystical as anything I've seen lately. The different meanings of the word "malkin
" (a cat, a low class woman, a weakling, a mop or a name) sound kind of like my autobiography. A faery cat that dwells in the Highlands, witches, familiars, Macbeth, being burned at the stake - how mystical is that? But all cats are magic. They wave their tails and walk by their wild lonesome and care not a fig what we think about them - never have, and never will.




Monday, April 10, 2017

Some cats know




The old prospector’s nose for gold

the sailor who can read the sky

the gambler’s sense of when to fold

the trick to making apple pie





























these mysteries one cannot explain

this old black art

so queer and quaint







































like making love, or making rain

either you got it,

or

you

ain’t
































Some cats know

you can tell by the touchin’






they don't come on huffin’ and puffin’

and grabbin’ and clutchin’






































some cats know

how to take it nice and slow













but if a cat don't know

a cat don't know








































some cats know

how to stir up the feelin’

they keep foolin’ round

till they're half way to the ceilin’


































some cats know

how to make the honey flow







but if a cat don't know

a cat don't know









































some cats know just where it's at

they are not like some others

I would ruther one like that

If I had my druthers






Some cats know

how to play nice and pretty










































nice and soft

and soon you're off to

good time city










































some cats know

how to take it nice and slow








































but if a cat don't know

a cat don't know





he just


don't


know





(Lyrics by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller)

Tuesday, January 10, 2017

The best cat, I mean, the BEST






Here kitty, here kitty
Here little kitty, here little kitty
Here kitty, here kitty 
Here little kitty cat




Look at the little kitty cat
A-walkin' down the street
I bet he's got no place to go, 
or nothin' good to eat
Look at the little kitty cat
With tiny tired feet
He ought to have a place to go, 
'Cause he's so very sweet!

Here kitty, here kitty,
Here little kitty, here little kitty
Here kitty, here kitty,
Here little kitty cat






I’m gonna ask my mama 
if she’ll let me take him home
Where I can hold him close to me 
so he won’t have to roam
He oughta have a lot of milk, 
and lots of fish and meat
Instead of finding what he can 
in the alley and the street

Here kitty, here kitty,
Here little kitty, here little kitty
Here kitty, here kitty,
Here little kitty cat




Now look at the little kitty cat
A-sleepin' in his bed
He’s got a place to rest his feet 
and lay his weary head
I’m going to see that he will stay

as happy as can be

And now when he goes walking 
he’ll go walking next to me

Oh, kitty, 
Oh, kitty,
Oh how I love my sweet little kitty!
Oh kitty, oh kitty,
Sweet little kitty cat!





Cat lover's note. This song, beloved in my childhood, is somewhat biographical. Bentley came to us from the SPCA, designated as a "stray". These were once called "alley cats", though the term "stray" was floating around to describe missing dogs. I knew very little about Bentley's history. Nobody did. He was about a year old, brought in by someone who found him badly injured, likely mauled by a dog or coyote. We had to piece together his story after the fact: perhaps he had wandered off from somewhere, gone on a little adventure, and become lost. There was nothing remotely feral about him, though - his gentleness and sweetness was immediately apparent, even from his picture.

When I first saw him in his little SPCA cubicle by himself, he jumped down from his high place and ran up to me, looking up at me expectantly. I picked him up, he relaxed in my arms, and it was instant love. When I opened the door to the cat-carrier, he went in there like a shot.

I had my cat. He didn't have any fur on his shoulders, but I could see the healed puncture-marks where he had been so badly bitten. My daughter-in-law looked at him and said, "That's where his wings broke off."




The thing is, we had not even planned to have a cat. At all. The "cat-riarch", Murphy, had lived to be 17, and at that point we said "no more cats". I was into birds then, kept one for eleven years, and when Jasper died I got a new lovebird named Paco, a gorgeous, sweet little lavender-colored thing that I immediately became deeply attached to. The grandkids loved her immensely. When she was only about eight weeks old, I found her dead on the floor of the cage. I never found out what went wrong.

Why a cat? It was unlikely. My daughter had just gotten a new kitten, adorable. She kept saying, oh, c'mon you guys, you're pensioners, you need a cat. One day when I was feeling particularly ripped up about Paco, I said to Bill, "Jesus, we might as well just get a bloody cat."




Bill said, "We could get a cat." He said it hopefully. He said it with a sense of possibility. Perhaps we needed to revisit that "no more cats" decision of years ago.

It didn't take long. The fund of adoptable kittens was small, but Bentley was a year old and home-ready. His manners were impeccable, and my feeling is that he had a good home, but they didn't neuter him, and one day he followed the siren call. A bad thing, or a good thing? It was good for us. 

Here is his SPCA mug shot. At this point he was named Theo, so he has had at least three names in his lifetime:






He has been the best cat, I mean, the best. Gentlemanly, self-possessed, even classy, like his name. Yet just as off-kilter and unpredictable as any feline. He is the master of the soft-paw stealth attack. Though the fur grew back on his shoulders where he had been picked up and thrashed, when he leans forward I can see little gaps underneath where the skin was too damaged. I call these his "duelling scars". 

Why is Bentley on this blog so much? Hell, I'm getting views for the first time in seven years! But it's more than that. He changed my life. I never expected that, at all. 





It takes a cat like Bentley to do that.


Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Some cats know



The old prospector’s nose for gold

the sailor who can read the sky

the gambler’s sense of when to fold

the trick to making apple pie




























these mysteries one cannot explain

this old black art

so queer and quaint






































like making love, or making rain

either you got it,

or

you

ain’t
































Some cats know

you can tell by the touchin’






they don't come on huffin’ and puffin’

and grabbin’ and clutchin’




































some cats know

how to take it nice and slow













but if a cat don't know

a cat don't know







































some cats know

how to stir up the feelin’

they keep foolin’ round

till they're half way to the ceilin’


































some cats know

how to make the honey flow







but if a cat don't know

a cat don't know









































some cats know just where it's at

they are not like some others

I would ruther one like that

If I had my druthers






Some cats know

how to play nice and pretty










































nice and soft

and soon you're off to

good time city










































some cats know

how to take it nice and slow








































but if a cat don't know

a cat don't know





he just


don't


know