#ReadingtheMeow2023: Thomasina

When I picked out Thomasina to read for a cat-themed reading event at Literary Potpourri, all I knew about it was that the title character was a cat, and the author had also written Mrs ‘Arris Goes to Paris, a book I’d recently enjoyed. I didn’t pay attention to the subtitle (“the cat who thought she was a god”), and I had no idea I was about to get into what is basically a story of religious conversion.

No, not a conversion to the worship of cats; nor is Thomasina really the central character of this tale, even though she is a catalyst (ha ha) for much that happens. The main emotional trajectory is that of Andrew MacDhui, an unhappy widower who wanted to be a surgeon and was forced by his father to become a vet like himself. Although he is skilled and knowledgeable, MacDhui’s anger and resentment poison his treatment of the animals he finds beneath his notice. Rumor has it that he’s a mite quick with the chloroform, and doesn’t seek to save animals he judges not worth it.

MacDhui loves his seven-year-old daughter Mary Ruadh, but detests her cat, Thomasina. And when Thomasina is injured and brought to his office during a moment of fatal distraction, he orders what he considers a mercy killing, but Mary Ruadh considers a murder. The rift this creates in their relationship sparks a painful process through which MacDhui has to question the very principles upon which his life has been built. In time, this includes allowing into his heart his need for a loving and forgiving Divine Presence that will allow him to admit and forgive his own errors, which stem from unacknowledged pain. With the help of a mysterious young woman who cares for animals in the woods and is labelled a witch by some, a saint by others, his healing can finally begin.

Strong stuff, you might think! And it is, but it’s broken up with chapters from the cat’s point of view, which add a whimsical note. From the outset, Thomasina says she’s going to be killed, but we know somehow she will survive — or return? — since she is telling this tale. In charming feline fashion she tells us of her likes (the smell of lavender) and dislikes (being carried upside down like a baby), her duties as a cat (watching mouseholes), her love and sympathy for her mistress, Mary Ruadh, and her distrust of the red-bearded veterinary doctor.

After the disaster, Thomasina’s place is taken by Talitha, who lives with the Red Witch in her forest cottage and “thinks she is a god.” That is, she remembers a prior incarnation as the cat-goddess Bast in Egypt, and though unnaccountably humans no longer seem to worship her, her elemental powers slowly come back, bringing on the crucial denouement.

The story is all about how one copes with trauma, with the agony of powerlessness, and Thomasina’s trauma, which she deals with through dissociation and escape into an imagination of divine power, is a reflection of MacDhui’s own trauma, which disconnected him from his child-self and from the innocence and living forces of nature. As his little girl comes close to the brink of death, his own soul is rescued by daring to love again, in spite of the risk of loss. He recovers the capacity to grieve and along with it his true self. And as wholeness returns, so can Thomasina, no longer to rage and punish as an angry, exiled elemental force, but to serve as the conduit and symbol of domestic well-being that is the rightful role of our household pets.

Coming from an earlier era, the book is unabashedly sentimental and more than a bit religious, but in a vein that is certainly not dogmatic. It upholds love as the central value and ultimate goal of human endeavor, rather than knowledge, power, or righteousness, and explores the miracles that can happen when suffering leads us to embrace love instead of rejecting it.

So although I was a bit surprised to find all this packed into my little cat story, I was very glad to have read it, and grateful for Reading the Meow, without which I don’t think I would ever have picked it up. I can’t wait to see what others have discovered this week!

This is also my first book reviewed for #20BooksofSummer23. See what else is on my list here.

Paul Gallico, Thomasina (New York Review Books, 2018; originally published 1957)