Pushkin's Cat: The Spirit Sharing Quarters with the Sun of Russian Poetry

Alexander Pushkin, Russia's greatest poet, was known as 'the sun of Russian poetry'. Throughout his brief and intense life (he died at thirty-eight), a cat was at his side for nearly every creative evening. Pushkin kept cats in his homes in St. Petersburg, Mikhailovskoye, and Moscow. The most famous was a grey-white Russian Blue he called Kotik — 'little kitty'. He was an avid cat lover, once writing in a letter, 'A poet needs a cat because it does not speak — but it tells me with its eyes, yet again, that you have written it wrong.' When Pushkin returned to Moscow in 1826 after being pardoned by the tsar, his first act was to feed Kotik an extra meal. Today, the Pushkin Museum in St. Petersburg still displays items that belonged to his cats.