Authors & their Cats: Patricia Highsmith

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Authors & their Cats: Patricia Highsmith

From Writers and their Cats by Alison Nastasi:

Patricia Highsmith, author of The Talented Mr. Ripley and Strangers on a Train, didn’t have a reputation that gave people the warm fuzzies, but her gruff personality seemed to soften around her cats. She seemed to prefer them to humans. “My imagination functions much better when I don’t have to speak to people,” Highsmith once said. Still, she always looked to her pet to tackle the day head-on. “When I get up in the morning, I first of all make the coffee and then I say to my cat, we’re going to have a great day,” the author told Naim Attallah in an interview.

Highsmith shared her life with many cats, including her chocolate point Siamese named Semyon (who loved to chase his tail), Sammy, Spider, Charlotte (who wouldn’t stop crying when Highsmith passed away), and an unnamed “brindle cat” she got for her birthday. Spider was eventually given to Scottish author Muriel Spark who said, “You could tell he had been a writer’s cat. He would sit by me, seriously, as I wrote, while all my other cats filtered away.”

Dogs never seemed to make it very far in a Highsmith novel, but cats always survived. Highsmith was also known to sketch her cats, despite spending most of her time with them curled around her typewriter. When asked what she always dreamt of having in life, Highsmith responded: “A charming two-story house, good martinis and a good dinner with French wine ... a wife, and books and a Siamese cat.”