Nine Lives

"I am not a friend, and I am not a servant . . . I am the Cat who walks by himself, and all places are alike to me."

If Rudyard Kipling was right about cats, the dawn-age original of The Cat That Walked by Himself had issued a declaration of independence that all descendants have observed since. But the cats' aloofness and self-reliance have never stopped some people from worshipping them, some people from boiling them in oil,** or generations of artists from trying to catch their inscrutable good looks.

Last week Manhattan's dignified Cooper Union put on a show whose purpose was to track the cat through history with the help of sculpture, painting and design. It took more than 250 separate items (in an exhibit entitled "Nine Lives") to spread out the story: from the Egyptians' poker-faced cat-headed goddess Bast to the Chesapeake & Ohio's pampered, machine-age Chessie.

In the work of artists of the 2,500 years between, the public could find cats of its choice in all sizes, complexions and dispositions. Among those present: a centuries-old trowel-eared Cat Head in bronze (7th-4th Century B.C.) which stared out of its case with the composed dignity that its important place in Egyptian society had justified; a mummy of the same breed (one of thousands of such embalmed animals found in the Nile Valley), bound into a thin, dusty cylinder with only the ears and sunken face visible; a 15th Century specimen crouched and grinning above a terse warning: "Beware of cats, which lick in front and scratch behind."

Handsome cats present were among the oldest and most modern. Egyptian and Oriental artists caught best the cat's agile and delicate movement and velvet-coated strength. British Cinemactor and Cat-lover James Mason had designed some prints showing impressionistic Siamese marching across rayon textile. American Sculptor William Zorach and French Painter Pablo Picasso contributed masterly and unsentimental portraits of sleek, well-fed soth Century tabbies.

Cooper Union's official catalogue-comment avoided larger conclusions about the whole thing: "It seems safe to let the cat, as he is represented in the present display, speak for himself; safe, or at least the part of wisdom."

** In the 16th and 17th Century suppression of witchecraft, the witch's cat suffered too.

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