By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
The late Terry Pratchett once wrote that if cats looked like frogs we’d realize what nasty, cruel little bastards they are. ‘Style,’ he went on. ‘That’s what people remember.’ Pratchett himself was a cat-lover who was surrounded by his family pet when he died in 2015. Many writers have been cat people. But what about songwriters?
There are plenty of great cat songs in the annals of popular music, even if it’s harder to name a song title with ‘cats’ in it than it is to reach for a ‘dog’ song like ‘How Much Is That Doggie in the Window’ or ‘Dog Day Afternoon’. Below are some of my favourites, and my cats’ favourites. Just kidding. Apparently cats don’t care for our music, the picky little bastards.
1. Pink Floyd, ‘Lucifer Sam’.
Written by Pink Floyd founder Syd Barrett, ‘Lucifer Sam’ is a classic in the canon of cat songs, and was reportedly inspired by Barrett’s own pet Siamese cat. Or was it inspired by a person, a rival ‘hip cat’ of Barrett’s acquaintance?
Floydists can’t agree, but personally the references to a ‘ship’s cat’ and ‘prowling’ at night strongly suggest a bona fide four-footed furry friend. The cat is certainly mysterious: ‘something I can’t explain’, as the famous lyric has it.
2. Queen, ‘Delilah’.
A very different song from the Tom Jones number of the same name, this 1991 track from Queen’s last album with Freddie Mercury, Innuendo, is about Mercury’s cat. The clever lyrics addressed to this ‘irresistible’ love in Mercury’s life withhold the fact that Delilah is a cat until after we’ve learned she’s ‘got away with murder’; but when the cat cuddles up with the singer, she brings happiness to him so that all that mouse-killing is forgiven.
3. Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, ‘Our House’.
One of the tenderest love songs ever written, the track provided the perfect music to accompany a montage in the final episode of the sitcom Only Fools and Horses in 1996, when the Trotters became millionaires. (Okay, technically that wasn’t the last episode but I’ve memory-holed the abysmal specials made a few years after.)
Graham Nash reportedly wrote this song in less than an hour, in 1970. His partner at the time, Joni Mitchell, had indeed bought a vase that morning and when they returned home, he suggested she put some flowers in the vase while he lit the fire. He then wrote a song about the house in which they lived together in LA, complete with Mitchell’s ‘two cats in the yard’.
4. Joshua Kadison, ‘Jessie’.
Although this 1993 song is about an absent (former?) lover contacting the singer to rekindle their romance, it also has a memorable cameo from a cat named Moses, who appears at several points. It’s been speculated that ‘Jessie’ is none other than Sarah Jessica Parker, whom Kadison is rumoured in some quarters to have dated, but Parker has denied this.
5. The Cure, ‘The Love Cats’.
Was this 1983 song inspired by Patrick White’s 1970 novel The Vivisector, in which a sack of stray cats is unceremoniously drowned? It’s possible, though the link remains tenuous. What is more certain is that this song is quirky fun, a bit of pop pastiche (indeed, the song began life as a parody, and Robert Smith claimed to have been drunk when he composed the song), and a must for any cat-lover.
Curiously, the mansion used in the video for the song was ‘borrowed’ from an estate agent, who believed the band were genuinely interested in buying the house (they weren’t).
6. Squeeze, ‘Cool for Cats’.
Taking in everything from cowboys and Indians to cops and robbers (via The Sweeney, one of the biggest UK cop shows of the 1970s), this 1979 song is at once completely of its time and still remarkably fresh and – for want of a better word – ‘cool’ over 45 years on.
‘Cats’ in the song’s title alludes to an old 1950s TV show about rock ‘n’ roll, with ‘cats’ being slang for cool people. Okay, so not literally our four-legged whiskered furry friends, but it’s a great song, so I’m including it and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop me.
7. Al Stewart, ‘Year of the Cat’.
This 1976 song had a curious origin. The piano tune had already been written, and Stewart wished to write some lyrics for it. Initially he wrote about the suicide of Tony Hancock, but the American record company hadn’t heard of the late British comedy actor. Then he wrote lyrics to a song he called ‘Horse of the Year’ (reportedly about Princess Anne), until finally he chanced upon the eventual song title.
His girlfriend had a book on Vietnamese astrology, and Stewart found the book open at a chapter called ‘The Year of the Cat’. Realising it was a great song title, Stewart wrote the lyrics around the title, inspired by seeing the 1942 film Casablanca on the TV one day. The song is really about a man’s encounter with a mysterious woman in a silk dress, but the ‘year of the cat’ offers the song’s memorable refrain.
8. Janet Jackson, ‘Black Cat’.
The only track on Jackson’s iconic 1989 album Rhythm Nation 1814 to be written entirely by the singer herself, ‘Black Cat’ is about a useless lover whose ‘nine lives’ are running out. So although the ‘cat’ here may be metaphorical, the motif of the lover as a cat is used cleverly to delineate the nature of the relationship.
9. Ugly Kid Joe, ‘Cat’s in the Cradle’.
Ugly Kid Joe’s cover of the Harry Chapin song ‘Cat’s in the Cradle’ began life as a ‘filler’ track for the band’s debut album, but became their biggest hit. Although the song is more importantly about the relationship between a father and his son (or about a father realising he neglected to spend time with his son when he was growing up), it’s one of the most famous songs to feature cats in both its title and lyrics, so it earns its place here.
10. Tom Jones, ‘What’s New Pussycat’.
Let’s conclude with one of the most iconic ‘cat songs’ ever written. It was the title song for the 1965 film starring Woody Allen and Peter Sellers, and the track was composed by legendary songwriting partnership, Burt Bacharach and Hal David.
But is the ‘pussycat’ in the song a literal cat? Again, the cat here is metaphorical: ‘pussycat’ is the name the character in the film gives to the numerous women he pursues, while in the song, Jones tells a girl to powder her pussycat nose so he can kiss her ‘sweet little pussycat lips.’ Kissing ‘pussy lips’ may convey something quite different sixty years on, but we’ll draw a veil over that.