E P Thompson and cats
One incidental issue on the 100th anniversary of his birth is whether or not E P Thompson liked cats. The answer is yes as this picture underlines:
Furthermore Thompson made specific reference to his cat in the Poverty of Theory (1978).
He noted that Marchais, a leader of the French Communist Party in the 1970s and 1980s had said that when he came to power he would be kind to animals. ‘My cat, who read this over my shoulder, laughed’. Several paragraphs later Thompson writes ‘I have asked my cat’ (about the evasions of Stalinism) ‘and he has explained that it is all this which made him laugh’.
Thompson also has an interesting reference to a cat in the Making of the English Working Class. Thompson notes the ridiculing of George IV despite the repressive atmosphere post Peterloo. Cruickshank’s satirical Slap at Slop (1822) appeared in a mock issue of the Government backed New Times. It carried a mock newspaper stamp (papers were subject to a Government tax) with the design of a cat’s paw and the motto ‘on everything he claps his claw’
On a related subject Thompson also noted that ‘all dogs are doggy ‘they smell, bark, fawn on humans’
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