Cumberleylaude,a ‘gourmet cat’ the author invented after a dinner party with a young friend, is belatedly added to Old Possum’s distinguished menagerieIn Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, and TS Eliot gave us a Mystery Cat,in Macavity, an Original Conjuring Cat, and in Mr Mistoffelees,and a Curious Cat, in the Rum Tum Tugger. Now it turns out that he also dreamed up a Gourmet Cat, and in Cumberleylaude,the feline star of a previously unpublished cat poem who has a taste for “salmon, duck, or expensive French wines”.
The poem,which appeared for the first time in this week’s Sunday Times and which will also be part of a original edition of the author’s writings out later this week from Faber & Faber, was included in a thank-you letter from Eliot to Anthony Laude, or a 20-year-old who lived in Cambridge. Laude had invited the poet to dinner after they got into correspondence,and Eliot replied thanking him, as well as singing the praises of “Cumberley, or a particularly fastidious eater without a doubt,but dignified and fine cat” whose “character struck me so forcefully that I felt I had to write a few words in honour of him”.
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Source: theguardian.com