The Retired Cat
Read 'The Retired Cat' by 'William Cowper' and provide your summary and literary analysis in the comments section below.
A poet's cat, sedate and grave
As poet well could wish to have,
Was much addicted to inquire
For nooks to which she might retire,
And where, secure as mouse in chink,
She might repose, or sit and think.
I know not where she caught the trick--
Nature perhaps herself had cast her
In such a mould [lang f]philosophique[lang e],
Or else she learn'd it of her master.
Sometimes ascending, debonair,
An apple-tree or lofty pear,
Lodg'd with convenience in the fork,
She watch'd the gardener at his work;
Sometimes her ease and solace sought
In an old empty wat'ring-pot;
There, wanting nothing save a fan
To seem some nymph in her sedan,
Apparell'd in exactest sort,
And ready to be borne to court.
But love of change, it seems, has place
Not only in our wiser race;
Cats also feel, as well as we,
That passion's force, and so did she.
Her climbing, she began to find,
Expos'd her too much to the wind,
And the old utensil of tin
Was cold and comfortless within:
She therefore wish'd instead of those
Some place of more serene repose,
Where neither cold might come, nor air
Too rudely wanton with her hair,
And sought it in the likeliest mode
Within her master's snug abode.
A drawer, it chanc'd, at bottom lin'd
With linen of the softest kind,
With such as merchants introduce
From India, for the ladies' use--
A drawer impending o'er the rest,
Half-open in the topmost chest,
Of depth enough, and none to spare,
Invited her to slumber there;
Puss with delight beyond expression
Survey'd the scene, and took possession.
Recumbent at her ease ere long,
And lull'd by her own humdrum song,
She left the cares of life behind,
And slept as she would sleep her last,
When in came, housewifely inclin'd
The chambermaid, and shut it fast;
By no malignity impell'd,
But all unconscious whom it held.
Awaken'd by the shock, cried Puss,
"Was ever cat attended thus!
The open drawer was left, I see,
Merely to prove a nest for me.
For soon as I was well compos'd,
Then came the maid, and it was clos'd.
How smooth these kerchiefs, and how sweet!
Oh, what a delicate retreat!
I will resign myself to rest
Till Sol, declining in the west,
Shall call to supper, when, no doubt,
Susan will come and let me out."
The evening came, the sun descended,
And puss remain'd still unattended.
The night roll'd tardily away
(With her indeed 'twas never day),
The sprightly morn her course renew'd,
The evening gray again ensued,
And puss came into mind no more
Than if entomb'd the day before.
With hunger pinch'd, and pinch'd for room,
She now presag'd approaching doom,
Nor slept a single wink, or purr'd,
Conscious of jeopardy incurr'd.
That night, by chance, the poet watching
Heard an inexplicable scratching;
His noble heart went pit-a-pat
And to himself he said, "What's that?"
He drew the curtain at his side,
And forth he peep'd, but nothing spied;
Yet, by his ear directed, guess'd
Something imprison'd in the chest,
And, doubtful what, with prudent care
Resolv'd it should continue there.
At length a voice which well he knew,
A long and melancholy mew,
Saluting his poetic ears,
Consol'd him, and dispell'd his fears:
He left his bed, he trod the floor,
He 'gan in haste the drawers explore,
The lowest first, and without stop
The rest in order to the top;
For 'tis a truth well known to most,
That whatsoever thing is lost,
We seek it, ere it come to light,
In ev'ry cranny but the right.
Forth skipp'd the cat, not now replete
As erst with airy self-conceit,
Nor in her own fond apprehension
A theme for all the world's attention,
But modest, sober, cured of all
Her notions hyperbolical,
And wishing for a place of rest
Anything rather than a chest.
Then stepp'd the poet into bed,
With this reflection in his head:MORAL
Beware of too sublime a sense
Of your own worth and consequence.
The man who dreams himself so great,
And his importance of such weight,
That all around in all that's done
Must move and act for him alone,
Will learn in school of tribulation
The folly of his expectation.
The Retired Cat Summary and Analysis
William Cowper presents a comic little narrative about a cat who takes herself very seriously. At first, the animal seems almost aristocratic in her tastes: she likes hidden corners, elevated perches, and comfortable retreats, and the poem lovingly treats her as if she were a genteel householder looking for privacy and refinement. The speaker follows her habits with amused precision, turning an ordinary pet into a character with pride, preferences, and even a kind of social imagination.
The story then shifts from pleasure to irony. The cat's search for comfort leads her into a drawer lined with soft linen, where she settles into a luxurious sleep, only to be forgotten and trapped. What begins as a playful portrait of self-satisfaction becomes a warning about the danger of overestimating one's own importance. The poem's central meaning lies in that reversal: self-regard may feel grand in the moment, but reality eventually corrects it. At the same time, Cowper keeps the moral light and comic, so the lesson never feels harsh even as it exposes human vanity through feline misfortune.
Tone in The Retired Cat
Cowper's tone is amused, observant, and gently corrective rather than severe. He treats the cat with enough affection to make her amusing instead of merely ridiculous, but the final moral sharpens his wit into a clear warning. The mood for the reader moves from playful curiosity to mild suspense and then to relieved comedy, ending with a neat sense that the joke has revealed something true about pride.
This literary analysis was generated with AI and may contain interpretive differences. Provide your analysis in the comments section.
Themes in The Retired Cat
- Vanity and self-importance - The cat's delight in her own refined habits mirrors the way people can become overly impressed with themselves, a tendency the poem gently satirizes.
- Hidden danger in comfort - The soft drawer that seems like a perfect refuge becomes a trap, suggesting that pleasure and safety can quickly turn deceptive.
- Change and restless desire - The cat grows tired of one resting place and seeks a better one, reflecting the common impulse to trade contentment for novelty.
- Comic moral instruction - The poem uses humor and a small domestic episode to make a larger ethical point about humility and proportion.
- Human nature reflected in animals - By giving the cat motives and feelings like curiosity, vanity, and disappointment, the poem suggests that animal behavior can echo human habits.
- Dependence on others - The cat's fate depends on the actions of the maid and the poet, reminding readers that private confidence still exists within a world controlled by others.
Literary Devices in The Retired Cat
- Personification - The cat is given distinctly human attitudes, such as pride, preference, and self-consciousness, which makes the satire work by comparison with human behavior.
- Irony - The cat believes she has found an ideal retreat, but the very place of comfort becomes the source of her distress, creating a playful contrast between expectation and outcome.
- Narrative humor - Cowper tells the episode as a miniature story with suspense, surprise, and a comic rescue, keeping the moral lesson entertaining.
- Satire - The poem lightly mocks self-importance, using the cat's exaggerated sense of consequence to expose a human weakness.
- Heroic couplets - The neat rhymed pairs give the poem a polished, balanced movement that suits its witty, epigram-like moral ending.
- Imagery - Soft linen, drawers, apple trees, and the tin watering-pot create a vivid domestic setting that makes the cat's changing refuges easy to picture.
- Direct moralizing - The closing lines openly state the lesson, shifting the poem from anecdote into a deliberate warning about pride.
Symbolism in The Retired Cat
- The drawer - The drawer represents false security: it looks like a private, luxurious retreat but becomes a prison once closed.
- The cat - Puss stands for self-satisfied creatures, especially people who mistake comfort or status for real importance.
- The linen - The soft lining suggests luxury and indulgence, but it also lures the cat into vulnerability.
- The chest - The larger chest suggests the hidden consequences of misplaced confidence, enclosing what the cat cannot control.
- The watering-pot - This earlier resting place suggests temporary shelter and makes the cat's later search for a more refined space feel increasingly vain.
Historical Context of The Retired Cat
William Cowper wrote in a period when English poetry often favored wit, moral reflection, and polished form, especially in the tradition of the mock-heroic and the light moral fable. Poems of this kind frequently took a small domestic incident and gave it enough verbal elegance to point toward a broader truth about human conduct.
The poem also fits an eighteenth-century taste for observing ordinary life with irony and restraint. Rather than presenting nature or emotion in a grand Romantic way, it turns a household episode into a concise lesson about vanity, using formal couplets and humorous narration to make the point memorable.
Poems Similar to The Retired Cat
- The Dash - Linda Ellis
- A Poodle of a Certain Breed - Lewis Carroll
- The Mouse's Nest - Robert Frost
- To a Mouse - Robert Burns