Thank you for all your sympathetic comments over the loss of my beloved cat Marvin, who died on Tuesday. They have meant a lot to me in my present state. As I put it on our Clubland Q&A, troubles supposedly come in threes - so, in this last fortnight, (mild-ish) heart attacks, difficult litigation, and now the loss of one of the rare consolations of this last difficult decade.
When Feline Groovy: Songs for Swingin' Cats was released nine years ago, I was asked by France's Number One cat website, Bonjour le Chat, if I would come on and talk about Marvin. You can read the interview in the original French here, but I do not believe we have ever published an English translation. So here it is:
We have received questions about Mark Steyn's cat Marvin, who prompted him to record Feline Groovy, an album of songs all dedicated to cats! So here is Marvin, a hungry kitten rescued from the streets of Brooklyn a year ago, and now a star of showbusiness.When he welcomed this little black cat, Mark worried for a moment about how his dog Willy, who had been taken in a long time ago, would accept the arrival of this new member of the family at their house in the New Hampshire countryside. Willy is a so-called "difficult" dog.
"She is eleven years old now, but still you can see that she was horribly brutalised by someone who apparently used everything he could get his hands on to inflict torture. One day I took a tape measure out of a drawer to measure something and Willy went crazy. It happened with kitchen cutlery, with things you wouldn't imagine," says Mark.
"Seeing a banana would put her in a trance, and we could never figure out why. But, when she is afraid, Willy can attack. Yet, from the first moment, she never even pretended to attack Marvin. On the contrary, Marvin changed her character, calmed her down, 'tamed' Willy, who goes around always looking for his company. The two are more than friends: they make each other happier.
"That's something I see with cats all the time. In the morning, when I go down the stairs to make my first coffee, Marvin comes rushing up - at the risk of knocking me over - to nuzzle between my legs. And there's something wonderful about knowing that he needs my presence, as I need his."
Mark has always had cats, and other animals: "When I started in broadcasting, when I had just landed a difficult interview, I came home one evening to find my first kitten, Elliot, playing with a ball of 'wool'... which turned out to be the reel-to-reel tape of the interview, which I then had to reconstruct little by little bit like a jigsaw..."
Mark is a well-known conservative columnist in the United States, Canada, and Great Britain. A former disc jockey, he came to political commentary in parallel with another specialisation: American popular music from Broadway and Hollywood, and the musicals and films for which it was written. In addition to his articles and numerous books, he presents radio shows: a hectic life that is made more harmonious by Marvin's presence.
"Cats sense what state of mind you are in - if you are tense... I believe there are few moments more magical, and apt to restore a sense of life's priorities, than hearing the purr of a cat lying close to you. The English aesthete Lord Berners, about whom I made a documentary, used to say that he preferred cats with a very heavy purr; and having thought about it, I believe he was entirely right. When I pass half-an-hour with Marvin like that, I can deal with any stress; ideas come to me; and it was like that that I decided to record Feline Groovy."
~from Bonjour le Chat, December 2nd 2015
