14. The Cat that Could

Rosalía had entered the small vestibule in the back of the café. She had entered in her usual modest attire of dark cotton skirt with non-aggressive petticoats, a tightly-drawn upper garment, wide sleeves, and an ample cape. The color of all these items was nondescript, and even her bonnet was an everyday adornment, strong enough to block most of the rain and typical of what most women wore. She had scurried along rainy Santiago streets, errands driving them to face the harsh elements. It was early February, time for downpours and chills, dreariness and resignation. 

Yet not all was gray and damp. The rainy air of the café was bitten by flickering lamps and candles and was studded with tiny flames that encouraged conversations while it rendered the persons conversing more anonymous. None of those in the place had noticed the woman opening the narrow door and slipping through it. Nobody could have described her. That was why the figure appearing about fifteen minutes later was also not one to attract attention.

The individual who opened the door with caution wore a simple smoke-colored suit, not new but also not worn many times. The trousers and jacket were well-fitted to the figure that was not at all bulky, but neither was it too slight for that sort of apparel. The man who moved from the small room into the area where people were gathered in conversation over hot drinks, cordials, or even a beer or two was not attracting any attention whatsoever. He looked around, trying to maintain the calmest of expressions, and then proceeded to the door on the side of the café rather than to the main entrance.

The side door opened onto O Preguntoiro street and there the streams of shoppers swallowed up every individual who didn’t have an errand or an appointment. Nobody showed the least interest in the gentleman who had left the café, and that was the plan. The man had only a simple objective: that of walking the old streets, watching and listening, catching scraps of conversation. The point, simple as it was, was just to observe everything without being noticed, whether standing still or tracing footsteps.

It was early evening and the person who had left the café was now walking up the street, called Orfas, toward the Praza do Pan. Nobody was concerned about him, but when he stopped quickly in the street, raindrops pelting everyone who was occupied in carrying out their personal missions, it was to approach a bedraggled kitten huddled in a doorway. The kitten didn’t pay attention to the man because it was so cold and hadn’t eaten all day. It just mewed a little, drowning in its sad hunger, and then the man scooped it up and inserted the scrawny feline under his jacket.

Kitten and human went to the apartment where the cat was subjected immediately to a warm rinsing off and was offered food. They were finally at peace, with the animal dried off and sitting in the lap of the person who had found it. They had settled in before a fire and hoped not to be disturbed. The only task for the moment was finding a name for the cat, who had turned out to be female. That was easier said than done. In the end, after a good hour of pondering, the person, who when dressed as a man, had tentatively chosen two names. The names would be used according to the little cat’s behavior.

The first name chosen was Musa, because ‘Rosendo’ - who had now switched to more appropriate garb for a woman - was hoping the little ball of fluff would inspire her to write. Many authors have muses, but rare, very rare, was it to have a muse that was a cat. At the same time, the kitten, with its long black fur and the white tuft beneath its chin, reminded its rescuer of a being in the presence of a mysterious link to another time and place. 

Musa, whom she also called Bast or Bastet, was so named because that was the name of the cat goddess from the time of the Egyptians. Felines had been honored in Egyptian society, but when cats spread to other parts of Europe, they coincided with the spread of Christianity. That religion couldn’t tolerate so-called pagan practices, just as it assigned women to the circumference of normal social rituals, removing their goddess status. Cats and females, invisible and silenced.

Rosendo - who was also Rosalía, as must be obvious by now - thought about the goddess Bast and how she had been revered centuries ago. She had been the foremost deity in Egypt and had flourished until the Roman Empire entered its decline, which coincided with the emergence of Christianity. The animal that was associated with good powers and magic came to be feared and reviled, bound in people’s thinking to women who were thought to be witches. The name Bast (Bastet) was in homage to the ancient beliefs, harking back to the time when cats were mummified along with humans. When they mattered.

The other name, Musa, was chosen because when Rosalía looked into the kitten’s gold-green eyes, she felt an odd inspiration. She thought of figures through time who had the power of creating stories; then she thought of Puss-in-Boots like the character in Perrault and Grimm’s stories. Puss might be a trickster, but he was also very clever and wasn’t bad - he didn’t really do much harm. She began to think, and before long, a story came to her.

Rosalía’s cat muse morphed into a gentleman wearing boots and with a wise, rustling cape draped over a sturdy torso. He retained some of the magic ability that Bast had possessed, and his agility allowed him to appear and disappear with a twirl of his silken cape. Like the cat in the children’s story, which was not a goddess, the gentleman she conjured up wore boots: blue ones, high and with elegant lacings. He employed his skill as a mischievous, anonymous character whose goal was to expose the hordes of bad writers that were everywhere and, in passing, to poke fun at the conceited, superficial aristocracy that was so prevalent in Madrid, capital of cultural arrogance.

She smiled to herself as kitty became an attractive young man who strode through the streets of the big city, drawing the gazes of the rich while all the time laughing at their lack of creativity. The aristocrats seemed to think their wealth was equivalent to wit, and the ladies who were dolled up in outlandish attire fawned over him and the special blue boots he wore as he strode about, ridiculing them without their realizing it. He was hard to keep track of, yet inspired so many. He served as heartthrob and muse to the tasteless, arrogant members of privileged society and he was bent on stirring up a revolution that the culture greatly needed. 

It is important to note that the gentleman in the blue boots, as she imagined him, was both light on his feet and slightly androgynous. Rosalía began to write about the mysterious individual who had arrived and was going about trying to bell the cat, like the mice do in Aesop’s story. She understood the deep irony of having an anthropomorphic feline try to warn the general public of the presence of a menacing cat - so visible, ubiquitous, gallant, and inspiring, and not at all like the fairy tale.

Musa was helping her with the story. The kitten, its long black fur with the white patch under the chin begging to be stroked, was the best companion. Curled up on Rosalía’s lap or on one side of her small desk, she - because Musa was a gata, not a gato - purred gently, encouraging the writing of many chapters. The story was both strange and complex, but in the end, readers would find it very entertaining, albeit confusing. Many would never figure out that the figure determined to bell the cat might end up working its magic on them.

It was quite the leap to go from a rain-soaked ball of fur to the boots and cape, but that is exactly how the novel El caballero de las botas azules [The Gentleman in the Blue Boots]* came to be written. Who was to say that the gentleman wasn’t in fact a gentlewoman, disguised as a man just as Rosalía’s favorite author - George Sand of France - had done? Clothes do make the cat, which has a very long and ancient tradition of special powers. Rosendo too had been born of the ability to shapeshift and was only just getting started. 

After all, muses can come in many forms, sizes, and species. If they come wearing blue boots, so much the better.

* Novel published by Rosalía de Castro in 1867 and considered by many to be the best of the five she wrote. She was thirty years old.