Mr. COOLIDGE, President of the United States, recently issued a radiogram to his fellow citizens. For a political question of prime importance? No. Simply to ask that his familiar cat, nicknamed “Tiger”, who had gotten lost, be brought back to the White House. Twenty-four hours later the fugitive was brought back to the presidential palace and Mr. Coolidge was happy.

People who don't like cats. will smile at a concern shown so openly. The others will understand. It is, moreover, a curious observation to make, dogs are loved, more or less, by everyone; for cats, it's different: we hate them or we love them. No middle ground! The two opposing camps have never stopped and will never stop fighting each other with offensive or laudatory epithets, with lots of contradictory examples.

The first to speak of the pretty feline is the solemn M. de Buffon. He accused her, among other vices, of treachery, and also made this strange reproach of “never looking the person you love in the face”. After him, others repeated the same accusations, including the last one, which is nonsense. But he was overwhelmed in a very different way. He was declared in turn lazy, lascivious, unfaithful to his master, cowardly and fierce... what else do I know?

The truth is that the cat is not a domestic animal like the dog or the horse. Even when he agrees to live near us, to comply with our habits, he remains a somewhat wild being, fiercely jealous of his freedom. According to Méry's curious definition, "God made the cat to give man the pleasure of caressing the tiger."

Yes, the cat remains everywhere and always a little tiger. If he accepts that we caress him, we must rejoice without asking anything more from him, just as from a beast which would be both very strong and very gentle. And it is precisely this pride which is his, this independence of character by which all the friends of the feline race have been won over. They are quite numerous, these, and of such quality that there is more than one reason to make others hesitate.

Plato, in Greece, Scipio Nasica, in Rome, were friends of cats. Torquato Tasso, the poet of Jerusalem Delivered, dedicated a sonnet to his black cat in which he asked him to “lend him the light of his eyes during the night”. Joachim du Bellay rhymed, in honor of his, some pretty verses. Richelieu, as everyone knows, liked to surround himself with young cats and history has preserved the names of his favorites: Lucifer, Pyramus, Thisbe, Serpolet and Ludovic-le-Cruel. Colbert had the same tastes, and the tender Madame Deshoulières, and the beautiful Madame Récamier, and the melancholic Desbordes-Valmore.

But it was especially during the Romantic era that writers and artists showed a particular tenderness for the little tiger, perhaps suggested by Chateaubriand, who wrote somewhere: “Buffon mishandled the cat; I am working on its rehabilitation and I hope to make it a suitably honest animal, in the fashion of the times.”

Victor-Hugo's cat, the one who, in the salon of the Place Royale, sat proudly on an armchair, was called Chamoine and the one that the poet offered, in 1877, to his granddaughter, wore this Gavroche business card, boulevard Mère-Michel, around his neck. Théophile Gautier, enthusiastic about form and color, was particularly passionate about cats. Sainte-Beuve, among many others, had a favorite named Polémon. Mérimée, a catophile, declared that he did not believe that he was lowering his quality as a man by granting them intelligence. And he added, speaking of his own, “He has so much wit! "Baudelaire, finally, devoted some of his most beautiful verses to powerful and gentle cats, the pride of the house."

Should we still mention among the famous felines Démouette in Barbey d'Aurévilly; Isabelle to François Coppée; Khroumir to the polemicist Rochefort; Mie to Edmond de Goncourt, the only being in the world that the novelist kissed before dying; Pluto and Tigrine to Michelet; White-Heather to Queen Victoria; Lilith to Stéphane Mallarmé; Saint-Médard in Courteline; Le Jaunet to the entomologist Fabre; Gris-Gris to Raymond Poincaré, our current President of the Council; Hamilcar finally, the incorruptible guardian of the city of books”, celebrated by Anatole France?

Huysmans expressed the opinion of the catophiles well by declaring: “I only love cats, but I love them unreasonably, for their qualities and in spite of their faults”. However, the one who, if not the best loved, at least the best observed and the best described, is still Pierre Loti. There are few of his books where he hasn't talked about his favorites. Everything he said about it can be summed up in this definitive sentence: "Cats have little touchy souls, little souls of cuddliness, of pride and caprice, difficult to penetrate, only revealing themselves to certain privileged people and rejects the slightest outrage or sometimes the slightest disappointment..."

Is it surprising that Mr. Coolidge, despite the importance of his duties, sent a radio through space to find the pretty companion to whom he is undoubtedly, as much as any other, attached?

Claude FRANCUEIL,