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Charles Baudelaire 

(1821 - 1867)  

The French poet, Charles Baudelaire was so obsessed with cats that he paid more attention to them than he did his own friends and family. He would often enter a house, pick up the cat, kiss and stroke the animal, being completely occupied by it, and to the annoyance of the people in the house, ignore anything being said to him. 

On occasions he caused minor scandals when paying more attention to cats than to his companions. Baudelaire was often the subject of ridicule in the press, and was once described as being "A voluptuous wheedling cat, with velvety manners."  Baudelaire died in a Paris clinic of aphasia and hemiplegia on August 31, 1867.

The Cat

They are alike, prim scholar and perfervid lover:
When comes the season of decay, they both decide
Upon sweet, husky cats to be the household pride;
Cats choose, like them, to sit, and like them, shudder.

Like partisans of carnal dalliance and science,
They search for silence and the shadowings of dread;
Hell well might harness them as horses for the dead,
If it could bend their native proudness in compliance.

In reverie they emulate the noble mood
Of giant sphinxes stretched in depths of solitude
Who seem to slumber in a never-ending dream;

Within their fertile loins a sparkling magic lies;
Finer than any sand are dusts of gold that gleam,
Vague starpoints, in the mystic iris of their eyes.

By Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867)

The Cat (II)

I.

In my mind it strolls
As well as in my apartment,
A cat, strong, sweet and delightful.
When it meows, one scarcely hears it,

Its timbre is so tender and discreet;
Whether a growl or an appeasement,
It is always rich and deep?
That is its charm and its secret.

That voice, which pearls and filters
To the darkest recess of my purse
Delights me like a philtre
And fills me like the rhythms of a verse.

It lulls the most cruel pains to sleep
And contains all ecstasies,
It has not the need of words to speak
The lengthiest phraseologies.

There is no bow that tears so profound
On my heart's perfect strings,
No sovereign instrument vibrant with sound
Could stronger in me sing

Than your voice, mysterious
Seraphic, blissful cat? in form an angel,
Strange cat? in which all is
As harmonious as it is subtle.

II.

Out of its fur, brown and blonde
Rose a perfume so sweet I nearly
Dissolved in its scent, one night, embalmed
When I caressed it once, once only.

It is the familiar mien of a sire;
It judges, it presides, it inspires
All things in its empire;
Is there a fairy, is there a God, in its eyes fires?

When my eyes finally tire and pull away,
Turned around as by a magnet they veer
From this cat that I love, and gently
Look at myself in the mirror,

I see to my astonishment
The fire of its pale pupils inside me
Like beacons, lively opals clear and dominant
Contemplating me fixedly.

By Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867)

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