Essays About Moms and Cats

I had planned to skip Rebecca West’s ‘Why my Mother was Frightened of Cats.’ Essays about mothers are normally too mawkish; combine mothers and cats and nausea is inevitable.

The brilliance and humour of the three previous essays from The Essential Rebecca West carried me forward to, “He [Lord Roberts] would turn and run if a cat walked towards him on the parade-ground; and I quite realised that if Lord Roberts could not control this terror my mother could not be expected to do better. So there was no ill-feeling between us.’ Without shame or embarrassment,  I admit I finished this essay about mothers and cats. It is a first.

Geoff Dyer shoved me toward West, with the gentle encouragement of Emily at Evening All Afternoon and pages turned.