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Sleepyhead. Koosi, 16 July 2012

The Cats Will Know
By Cesare Pavese
Translated By Geoffrey Brock

Rain will fall again
on your smooth pavement,
a light rain like
a breath or a step.
The breeze and the dawn
will flourish again
when you return,
as if beneath your step.
Between flowers and sills
the cats will know.

There will be other days,
there will be other voices.
You will smile alone.
The cats will know.
You will hear words
old and spent and useless
like costumes left over
from yesterday’s parties.

You too will make gestures.
You’ll answer with words—
face of springtime,
you too will make gestures.

The cats will know,
face of springtime;
and the light rain
and the hyacinth dawn
that wrench the heart of him
who hopes no more for you—
they are the sad smile
you smile by yourself.

There will be other days,
other voices and renewals.
Face of springtime,
we will suffer at daybreak.

Cat Poems at the Poetry Foundation

With Drogon the cat, and have your picture taken with him…if he’s amenable (You can’t tell a cat what to do).

Drogon with his stuffed toy, Shai Hulud. Please don’t bring more toys for Drogon, he has enough. (Kibble or litter would be great, though.) In lieu of toys, what about making a donation to PAWS for their animal rescue missions in typhoon-stricken areas?

Bring books you’d like to exchange for other books, and get more books for free.

The members of our Camus Translation Group can pick up their books on Saturday.

Talk about books, cats and other things over

A treat from our lovely friends at

Thank you!

See you at the 7th floor, WSI Building, 1005 Metropolitan Avenue, Makati City, near the Makati Fire Station on Saturday from 4 to 6 pm. (Here’s the map).

The Writing Workshop participants will meet at the same venue at 2pm. (Bring hard copy of your first chapter.)

If you haven’t registered yet, drop us a line in Comments. Yes, you may bring a friend (who has no phobia of cats or nerds).

Drogon would like to thank silentfollower for the toy rat, which he plays with constantly. He bites it, kicks it all over the house, plays catch with it, and is generally maiming it with affection. We have called the toy rat Mickey Rourke.

Thanks, silentfollower, for the Chikako kimmidoll, the rope balls which Saffy and Mat played with for a record three minutes, and most especially the handmade notebook with photos of J.D. Salinger, James Salter and other authors on the cover.

The Meet and Greet with Drogon, Book Swap, and Coffee will proceed as scheduled on Saturday, 23 November, 4pm at the WSI Corporate Center on Metropolitan Avenue, Makati (next to Ecoville, here’s the map). If you haven’t already confirmed attendance, drop us a line in Comments so we can bring enough coffee and cookies for everyone.

Drogon says: Please help the Philippine Animal Welfare Society help the humans and animals displaced by Typhoon Yolanda. They need money; supplies can be obtained closer to the affected areas.

For information on the rescue and relief operations, visit the PAWS fb page. Their PayPal link and bank account numbers are here. Thank you!

There are many great books about cats: Natsume Soseki’s I Am A Cat (which Rene insists should be ‘We Are A Cat’) and T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats immediately spring to mind, and then there’s Saki’s alarming Tobermory. Perhaps the best of them is On Cats by Doris Lessing, which brings together her earlier works Particularly Cats, Rufus the Survivor, and The Old Age of El Magnifico in a single volume.

Danton Remoto gave us our copy ten years ago. Deeply moving but utterly unsentimental, On Cats is as dignified as its subjects. This is a book that cats would approve of.

“In the evenings people and the two resident cats, the rightful cats, were in the sitting room, and Rufus was under the bath. And then, one evening, Rufus appeared in the doorway of the sitting room, and it was a dramatic apparition, for here was the embodiment of the dispossessed, the insulted, the injured, making himself felt by the warm, the fed, the privileged. He glanced at the two cats, who were his rivals, but kept his intelligent eyes on us. What were we going to say? We said, Very well, he could use the old leather beanbag near the radiator, the warmth would help his aching bones. We made a hollow in the beanbag and he climbed into the hollow and curled up, but carefully, and he purred. He purred, he purred, he purred so loudly and so long we had to beg him to stop, for we could not hear ourselves speak. Literally. We had to turn up the television. But he knew he was lucky and wanted us to know he understood the value of what he was getting.”

– from Rufus the Survivor

The scraggly white stray cat who kept trying to run into our house in August.

Drogon today.

Photo by Robby Villabona. Unedited.

We took a poll of our Workshop participants, and most of them would prefer to start the Writing Workshop in January, after the holiday madness has passed. However, we’ve found that the merrymaking, overindulgence, chaos and general absurdity of the season is a great spur for writing, and we can’t allow this time to go to waste. As Reg pointed out, “the holidays are a source of emotion we can draw on.”

So we’re having an Orientation for the participants to the Writer’s Workshop on Saturday, 23 November 2013, 2pm at the WSI Corporate Center on Metropolitan Avenue, Makati (near the Makati fire station, here’s the map). We’ll schmooze with the writers, talk over their immediate concerns, and work out schedules and targets for their projects. Writers, if you have your early chapters ready, please bring printed copies you can give us. If you can’t make it on November 23, don’t worry—the workshop starts officially on January 11.

From 4 to 6pm, we’ll have a meet and greet with Drogon the cat. And a book swap! Bring the books you’d like to exchange or give away.

Can you make it? Drop us a line in Comments so we’ll know how much coffee and cake to prepare. Yes, you can have your picture taken with Drogon, provided he likes you (He does not scratch, and he allows us to trim his nails). If you’d like to bring a gift for Drogon, dry cat food (kibble) and kitty litter (non-clumping) would be highly appreciated.

The members of our Camus Translation Group can pick up their books at the meet and greet. See you there. Casual attire, but we won’t stop you if you want to wear white tie.