The Marginalian
The Marginalian

How a Cat Boosts Your Creativity

History is laced with cat-loving creators, from Hemingway’s profound affection for his felines to Edison’s pre-YouTube boxing cats to the traditions of Indian folk art. But hardly anyone has made a greater case for the cat as a creative stimulant and a mystical muse of writing than Muriel Spark in this wonderful passage from A Far Cry from Kensington (public library):

If you want to concentrate deeply on some problem, and especially some piece of writing or paper-work, you should acquire a cat. Alone with the cat in the room where you work … the cat will invariably get up on your desk and settle placidly under the desk lamp. The light from a desk lamp … gives a cat great satisfaction. The cat will settle down and be serene, with a serenity that passes all understanding. And the tranquility of the cat will gradually come to affect you, sitting there at your desk, so that all the excitable qualities that impede your concentration compose themselves and give your mind back the self-command it has lost. You need not watch the cat all the time. Its presence alone is enough. The effect of a cat on your concentration is remarkable, very mysterious.

Complement with some more tips on boosting creativity from John Cleese, T. S. Eliot, and some of today’s most exciting cross-disciplinary creators.


Published October 24, 2012

https://www.themarginalian.org/2012/10/24/muriel-sparks-cat/

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