Pet rescue: Unseen TS Eliot cat poem recovered

Cumberleylaude, a ‘gourmet cat’ the author invented after a dinner party with a young friend, is belatedly added to Old Possum’s famous menagerie

In Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, TS Eliot gave us a Mystery Cat, in Macavity, an Original Conjuring Cat, in Mr Mistoffelees, and a Curious Cat, in the Rum Tum Tugger. Now it turns out that he also dreamed up a Gourmet Cat, in Cumberleylaude, the feline star of a previously unpublished cat poem who has a taste for “salmon, duck, or expensive French wines”.

The poem, which appeared for the first time in this week’s Sunday Times and which will also be part of a new edition of the author’s writings out later this week from Faber & Faber, was included in a thank-you letter from Eliot to Anthony Laude, a 20-year-old who lived in Cambridge. Laude had invited the poet to dinner after they got into correspondence, and Eliot replied thanking him, as well as singing the praises of “Cumberley, a particularly fastidious eater without a doubt, but dignified and beautiful cat” whose “character struck me so forcefully that I felt I had to write a few words in honour of him”.