On Cats and Bats
If you’re wondering how I got my start in writing, as soon as I learned to print, I wrote my first story, “The Cat and the Bat,” on a 3 X 5 index card. You can see that I included important elements of drama and suspense. If only my recent writing were as exciting. There are mortifying spelling and grammar errors I can’t repair now, but you can see that I was already editing my writing as I erased the “er” from “loud.” The story also features a classic happy ending, reminiscent of my hopes expressed in the essay “On Imagining.”
I glued the index card into a scrapbook in junior high and wrote below that I’d written it in Grade 1, so it may have a copyright dated between 1972 and 1973. The card survived a 2001 flood in our storage locker, where I found the scrapbook in a box that had been soaked for a week while they pumped out the water and repaired the water main break. It spent the week with a construction paper valentine nearby that bled red ink during their time underwater together.
In my defence, I post Exhibit A: one of my first positive reviews (one star was the highest level back then). My Grade 1 teacher praised my rhyming exercise. I spot at least two errors in her review—I’d need more than my Grade 1 teacher to teach me about apostrophes.
The Cat and the Bat: A Thematic History and Review
We learn in the first sentence that Don is a privileged cat with his own house. Cats were revered in ancient Egypt, and the goddess Bastet had a temple dedicated to her. Japan is a modern country with more than five notable temples featuring cats, including Gōtoku-ji Temple in Tokyo. The historic inspiration for Don was a half-Siamese cat who lived in the writer’s house in Hugo, Minnesota (ca. 1970-1985). Cheerio, or Cheerios as he was sometimes called, was so named because his coat resembled a burnt breakfast cereal “O” of the same name.
In the second sentence, we learn that Don was so frightened by the sound of the bat’s wings that he “triped” [tripped] on a stone. In reality, cats can hear the ultrasonic sounds bats use for echolocation and would orient toward the flying mammal. It’s unlikely that a cat would trip on a stone, but the stone may serve here as a catalyst to add drama to the plot. Stones often represent the enchanted or unyielding forces of nature, such as the stone Hades used to punish Sisyphus in Tartarus.
Like cats, writers have used bats to symbolize both good and bad luck. Cats and bats are considered lucky in Japan and China (where the word for bat sounds like happiness or fortune), but unlucky in many Western cultures, where they symbolize evil forces or spirits, such as Dracula or witchcraft.
In the last sentences, we learn that when Don saw the unnamed bat, he was not afraid, and they became friends. Cats and bats are both nocturnal animals, so the timing of their interaction is plausible, but in reality, cats are one of the primary predators of bats worldwide, killing millions. It is against this backdrop that the surprising, heartwarming friendship between Don and the bat offers hope that mortal enemies can become friends.
What did you think? How are you doing? I’d love to chat…