Category: writing

Alison Anderson, Chartreux cats, Europa, Maria Guitart, Muriel Barbery, The Writer's Cats, writing

The Writer’s Cats

Jan Milusich
book cover image of The Writer's Cats. The background is black, and it shows an illustration of a door open and light coming from it. Four gray cats peer from the doorway.

In today’s post, the cats have their day, Muriel Barbery’s cats.

Muriel Barbery, the author of The Elegance of The Hedgehog, and her peerless literary advisors, her cats, co-created a book, The Writer’s Cats, translated by Alison Anderson, illustrated by Maria Guitart and published by Europa editions. To say it was not what I expected would be an understatement.

photograph of Muriel Barbery holding one of her gray, Chartreux cats.

What I expected was Muriel Barbery waxing on about the calming effects her cats provide her writing life; instead with the first slide of my e-book’s page I was let in on the inside scoop of Ms. Barbery’s writing foibles, as only her pets would know.

Muriel’s four Chartreux cats, a breed with blue-gray fur and copper eyes, are Kirin and Petrus, four-year-old brothers, and Ocha and Mizu, an eight-year-old brother and sister, each, except for Petrus, with distinctive neuroses.

illustrated image of three shelves displaying a teapot, teacups, glasses, bowls and books and two gray cats among the teacups and teapot.

Ocha, which means tea in Japanese, is the boss. He’s bigger and softer than the others and would rather spend the day snoozing by the fire but will kill for a mere crumb of paté.

Mizu, whose name means water in Japanese, has front legs that are shorter and slightly twisted and walks like a ferret. Mizu engages in endless discussions with her writer owner while curling closely against Ms. Barbery’s right hip. Territorial, Mizu is not be messed with concerning spaces she feels are hers.

Petrus is named after a wine the writer likes to drink and one of the characters in her book, The Life of Elves, which I’ve just now added to my TBR list. Petrus is always happy and, above all else, likes flowers.

illustration of one of the cats, Petrus laying in a field of flowers.

Last but not least is Kirin, the story’s narrator, named after a Japanese beer. Kirin is a self-proclaimed beauty who suffers, as some beauties do, with the worry of losing their looks.

According to her cats, Ms. Barbery suffers from restlessness, doubt, and denial. These three feelings are familiar to writers everywhere.

Her cats define writing as an impossible trade. One that dooms writers, theirs included, to dissatisfaction for all eternity. Although they did not offer a solution for their writer’s restlessness, save for said writer to give them their due attention, they have sought to solve the problem of their writer’s doubt.

illustrated image of Muriel Barbery, the author of The Writer's Cats reading a newspaper and her cats, only their tails showing because they are reading the newspaper too.

To do that, the cats learned to read. Ms. Barbery’s morning handwriting is messy, but she later types up what she’s handwritten. This is what they read. Mizu learned first, as Muriel read her texts aloud, and by peering at the text as it was read, Mizu found she could decipher print, then she taught the others.

While their writer is trapped in tormented slumber, wondering what her prose will look like in the morning, they read. Once they have shared their preferences, their attention moves to consistency, relevance, and the narrative progression of the text, its language, and its style.

two spot illustrations, one of the author on the phone answering the phone and one of the four cats on another phone line.

To best advise their owner, when she is rereading her text from the day before, Mizu sprawls across weak passages, Petrus sweeps his tail over them nonchalantly, Ocha meows insistently, and Kirin chews on the guilty page.

With their guidance, Muriel’s attention becomes focused, she rereads confidently, and the miracle occurs. She crushes the doubt that tormented her sleep.

The last affliction of their writer, denial, is more complicated. Sometimes, Muriel convinces herself that her text can hold water when it’s really full of leaks. In these cases, Mizu farts onto the offending lines, leaving distinct traces. After screaming and holding the sheet of paper at arm’s length, Muriel rereads the prose, shakes her head, and murmurs, “This is really bad.” And seeks to fix it.

Though her cats can read and critique, they cannot type. In the end, we find out that Ms. Barbery wrote the book. But Mizu, Ocha, Petrus, and Kirin are a little put out, as they feel that some details of their lives and preferences were portrayed inaccurately.

The cats want a little recognition for their literary labors of love. It’s not too much to ask. Without them, their writer would be lost, and the literary world would be turned on its head.

Where would writers, illustrators, readers, and creatives be without our furry feline or canine friends?

illustrated image of the author Muriel Barbery at her desk. There is a computer in front of her, pencils, paper, two cats on the table, one cat behind her on her chair and one cat peeking over the edge of her desktop. An ikebana vase with flowers and books are on the desk.

The photo below shows my literary companions; my chair is just out of side, beside Portia’s body. I look forward to writing for many reasons; time spent in their company is among them.

photographic image of the blogger's black dog, Portia laying under a patio table, on and underneat a nearby chair are the blogger's two cats , one black and white and one an orange tabby.

Portia, the black dog, is my constant companion. Sophie, the black and white cat, prefers when my lap has ample space for her to stretch out. Still, she’ll content herself with close proximity, and Pippin, the orange tabby, is conflicted. I’m sure he would be an alley cat, except for the availability of regular meals and the fact that we cater to his finickiness.

Now, if they could only meet Mizu, Ocha, Petrus, and Kirin, and be taught to read, not only would I have comforting writing companions, but literary advisors as well.

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considered similarities, reading, teaching, writing

Creative Comparisons

Jan Milusich

Back in 2019, when I was thinking about what to title my blog, writerreaderteacher seemed a perfect fit since I spent most of my days writing, reading, and or teaching.

a painted image of a white Victorian woman wearing a yellow dress with a white ruff around her neck and her brown hair in a bun is reading a small book while seated in a chair with a fluffy pink pillow behind her.

But if you’re a regular reader of this blog, then you’ve noticed that my posts focus more on writing and reading than teaching. That got me thinking that if I was going to keep the title, I ought to balance the three.

This post will consider the similarities writing, teaching, and reading share. As with memories, we may have different perceptions of the three, but everyone can agree that the written word is integral to each.

Painting of an Elizabethan man in a dark overcoat and white shirt who is sitting at a table writing. His hat hangs on the back of the chair and a mirror displays his profile and a gilt framed painting is behind him.

Similarities found in both teaching and writing:

Lesson plans created by teachers are much like the plot of a story. They can be outlined, and outcomes anticipated. The actions of an author’s character, much like a teacher’s student, can throw unexpected curveballs, be they emotional, behavioral, or both, into what seemed a linear plot, a straightforward lesson plan.

Those curveballs require improvisation, aka leaps of imagination, if a satisfying ending is to be created or a successful lesson is to be enjoyed.

We’ve all had the experience of teaching, we’ve helped someone learn how to do something and we’ve had to use our imagination to find ways to make the steps relatable and easy to comprehend. We may have also had to imagine other ways of getting the point across if our first attempt didn’t succeed.

Painting of a young blonde white girl, wearing a blue skirt and yellow bodice, who is leaning her crooked leg across a low table watching another hooded child hold up the front paws of a kitten to make it dance. Two other children look on and a brown and white dog barks at the side of the table.
Children Teaching Cat Dance, Known by Rijksmuseum is licensed under CC-CC0 1.0

It’s safe to say that writing and teaching need attention to task, imagination, and perseverance, but does reading?

Similarities to be found within writing and reading:

Writers read to edit, to learn, to fine-tune their writing, to explore, discover, and for pleasure. Readers read for pleasure, to learn, explore, and discover.

Authors write words and visualize characters, settings, and scenes. Similarly, a reader reads and visualizes characters, settings, and scenes; both are using their imagination.

book cover image of Leo Toltoy's War and Peace a young white lieutenant with dark curly hair, in a red waistcoat and white leggings is standing with one hand on his hip and the other on a walking stick.

As for attention to task and perseverance, imagine writing War and Peace, and if you haven’t already read it, imagine reading War and Peace. Enough said.

Similarities to be found in reading and teaching:

Books are as much a part of education as are pencil and paper. In the early grades, teachers read aloud to students to spark interest in a topic, to share something new, or to support a concept being taught. In upper grades, books are assigned to students for much the same reasons.

Teachers read to learn about topics or concepts they need to teach, and about how best to communicate to the children they need to reach.

As a teacher for the visually impaired, I work with individual students. I regularly seek out books that will help my students practice their visual skills, and develop their early literacy skills.

Cover image of the book The Hat which has a hedgehog wearing a stocking and sitting in the snow is at the center of the book. The hedgehog is surrounded by farm animals who are curious what the hedgehog has on his head.

In the coming week, I plan to read the book The Hat by Jan Brett with my students. Together, we will practice using top-to-bottom and left-to-right pre-reading visual scanning skills to search for details within the book’s illustrations.

We’ll also play an I SPY game locating, in sequential order of appearance, the images of the tale’s characters that are scattered around the room along with the clothing they use as hats.

I’ve considered several similarities between writing, reading, and teaching, in this post, and I’m sure there are more that I’ve missed, but in the end, I think writerreaderteacher, still works.