The NRB 2014 New Year’s Quiz: Cats in Literature
Test your feline intuition with this special quiz celebrating our literary cats. Answers are posted below. Good luck!
1 TS Eliot wrote a book of poems that inspired the hit musical Cats. What was the title of the original book?
2 What is the name of Lewis Carroll’s cat who is able to appear and disappear at will in Alice in Wonderland?
3 A 2012 book celebrated the cat graffiti of Newtown, Sydney. What was its title?
4 Raymond Chandler loved his cat. What was the cat’s name?
5 ‘Everything a cat is and does physically is to me beautiful, lovely, stimulating, soothing, attractive and an enchantment.’ This quote is from a book called Honourable Cat. Who is the author?
6 ‘For I will consider my cat Jeoffry/For he is the servant of the Living God and daily serving him …’ begins a poem by which poet?
7 Matthew Flinders wrote an essay about his beloved ship’s cat. What was the cat’s name?
8 A novel by Gabrielle Lord features ‘handcats’ as pets. What is the name of the novel?
9 A French writer said, ‘There are no ordinary cats’. Who was the writer?
10 Murder She Meowed (a Mrs Murphy Mystery) is one of a series written by which famous feminist author?
(The image above is Harold Cazneaux’s ‘Going Cheap’.)
Answers
1 TS Eliot’s book was Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.
2 The cat in Alice in Wonderland was the Cheshire Cat.
3 The Stripey Street Cat by Rachel Williams and Peter Warrington celebrated Newtown’s cat graffiti.
4 Raymond Chandler’s cat was called Taki.
5 Honourable Cat was written by Paul Gallico
6 ‘… My Cat Joeffry …’ was written by Christopher Smart.
7 Matthew Flinders’s cat was named Trim. (His bronze sculpture by John Cornwell, featured above, sits on a ledge behind Flinders’s statue at the Mitchell Library in Sydney.)
8 Handcats appear in Gabrielle Lord’s 1990 novel Salt.
9 Colette said there are ‘no ordinary cats’.
10 Murder She Meowed is by Rita Mae Brown.
