When I was a kid I had an LP of Boris Karloff reading Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories. I still have the sound of his voice in my inner ear. Even though Mr. Karloff had such a distinctive male voice, when he read The Cat Who Walked by Himself I always thought of the cat as female.
Sometimes I find myself thinking, in his intonation, “for I am the Cat who walks by Herself and all places are alike to me.” In the story, the cat tricks the woman into letting him live in the cave and drink milk. The woman admires the cat’s cleverness and forgives him for tricking her.
I like that the Cat is forgiven by the woman, unlike Echo who is punished for tricking Hera and consigned to forever repeat only the words of others.
Here I repeat a bit of Kipling in the cadence of Karloff:
cat-erwauling and purring…aloud… Who are your cats who walk by themselves?