On the dignity of felines

I just photographed this Leonardo caricature in Tuscany. “Even the smallest feline is a masterpiece”, the master comments on his Vitruvian cat with a satisfied face, as if he already knew that he would start his humanist treatise Laudatio cati (In praise of the cat) or De dignitate felidarum (On the dignity of felines) with this motto.

I also photographed this picture because it offers an opportunity to compare two nations’ souls, whatever that means. The other nation is the Russian, and the subject of comparison is the emblematic song about the cat, which is sung in the 1966 Soviet cult film Республика ШКИД.

This film is about how a school and art training were organized in the 1920s, after the civil war, for the orphaned children who wandered around (and committed crimes) by the millions in Russia. The protagonist of the film, Mamochka, wants to prove his talent with a beggar’s song.

У кошки четыре ноги Позади у нее длинный хвост Но трогать ее не моги За ее малый рост, малый рост

The cat has four legs, and has a long tail behind. But don’t hurt it, since it is so small by stature.

The song, one might say, begins in the same way as the picture. In the first two lines, it realistically depicts the cat with its four legs and one tail. But while the Italian artist continues this as “and these can be written in perfect plane figures, the circle and the square, so it harmonizes with the great relationships of the created world,” for the Russian two things follow: aggression and mercy. The cat is small and fragile: the first thought of the Russian is that it is easy to hurt. The second is to take pity on it and protect it. And yes, these two fit together in the Russian soul.

But the Russian character also requires a third component: brilliant absurdity. Already the unnecessarily factual opening image is absurd, but it is the performance that makes it really creepy. In the 1980s and 1990s, I myself heard such creepy and powerful songs from child beggars on Romanian and Soviet trains, and later in Iran. The film about Pyotr Leshchenko’s life, Петр Лещенко. Все, что было… (2013), also begins with such a scene, where the little Pyotr sings and begs on the streets of Chisinau. The emotionless, haunting song, accompanied with pizzicato chords, seems to be an Orthodox funeral song, a relative of later workers’ funeral marches.

Gennady Poloka, the director of Республика ШКИД, wanted to spice up the film with some блатные песни, gangsters’ songs that were still well-known in the 1920s and which today are enjoying a renaissance under the label “Odessan pub songs”. Aleksey Yeremeyev, the author of the autobiographical novel on which the film is based, himself quoted some of them. However, from the song about the difficult life of felines he only remembered the first verse. As can be seen from a recently published interview with composer Sergei Slonimsky, the rest was partly written by the composer, and partly expanded further by some unknown sons of the people after the success of the film. This is how it was included, as an authentic блатная песня, on the 2010 album Легенды блатной песни by the band Amerikanka:

А у кошки четыре ноги, Позади у неё длинный хвост. Но трогать её не моги За её малый рост, малый рост А кошку обидеть легко, Утюгом её между ушей. И не будет лакать молокооо, И не бууудет ловить мышей. А ты не бей, не бей, кота по пузу, Кота по пузу, кота по пузу. А ты не бей, не бей, кота по пузу, И мокрым полотенцем не моги. У ней голубые глаза, На ресницах застыла слеза. Это ты наступил ей на хвост, Несмотря на её малый рост

The cat has four legs, and has a long tail behind. But don’t hurt it, since it is so small by stature. It is easy to hurt the cat, with an iron rod between its ears, and it no longer drinks milk, and won’t catch mice any more. Don’t hit, don’t hit the cat’s belly the cat’s, the cat’s belly Don’t hit, don’t hit the cat’s belly, and don’t hurt it with a wet towel. It has blue eyes, with a tear on its eyelid: it was you who stepped on its tail, regardless of its small stature.

The extended text is almost reveling in the methods of doing in the cat, described with forensic precision and placidity, while it constantly formulates them as prohibitions. This song may also hint at violence against women, especially against one’s girlfriend, like Murka, written about the same time, but the singing rogue also identifies with the cat, and experiences the aggression that menaces it – which he knows well from his own daily life – as a threat against himself.

The absurd and therefore Russian character of the song is further enhanced by the 2020 music video by Отава Ё, in which it is accompanied by a series of gags made in the visual world of the films about the 1920s and 1930s, like Leonid Gaidai’s Twelve chairs, Vladimir Bortko’s Master and Margarita, or Vladimir Davidenko’s Mishka Japonchik. The main task of the gags is to evoke this retro visual world, but from their seemingly random succession, the thread of protecting the vulnerable emerges emphatically. This, perhaps, may give some ground for optimism regarding the future of the song and of the Russian soul.