Love Your Pet Day: new picture shows dialectical relation between Eric Hobsbawm and ‘his’ cat
February 20th is Love Your Pet Day (its not just the Beard Liberation Front that makes this sort of stuff up after all).
A new picture has emerged of Eric Hobsbawm and ‘his’ cat Ticlia. The photograph shows Hobsbawm looking at a text while the cat pointedly looks the other way. One suspects a significant, empirically based, but important ideological difference is involved.
Marlene Hobsbawm writes of the cat:
She just waltzed into our lives one day and none of us wanted to part with her. We put a notice on a lamp post outside, but nobody claimed her. We decided on the name of Ticlio, after the highest pass in Peru, though when I had taken her to the vet it turned out that she was a female and her permanent name became Ticlia. She was a most handsome tabby cat with four snow-white patches on her nose, chin, neck and paws. She had a good character and was not difficult- although she hated laughter, which was a hoot, and was easily annoyed by recorder playing. She knew Eric was the important one because he made the least fuss over her. Ticlia was loved by us all- she never got lost and was with us for fifteen years.
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