Sappho the Cat (1959-1975)

Aurelia Plath with Sappho, Cape Cod, c. 1972

Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes in 1959 acquired a tiger kitten but could not keep it: That summer the couple traveled the U.S., spent autumn at a writers' retreat, and in December packed up and moved to England. Sylvia had named the cat, a female, Sappho, and on 21 January wrote Esther Baskin from Boston:

"Did Ted or I tell you we are owners of a kitling? Granddaughter on one side of a cat belonging to Thomas Mann . . . The minute she walked into our apartment she went straight for a book of poems lying flat on the lowest bookshelf and possessed it."

Guess who fostered Sappho while her owners traveled, and inherited Sappho when her owners left the country less than a year after adopting her.

Fortunately, Aurelia Plath liked pets. Otto Plath had not allowed any. Aurelia quoted eight-year-old Sylvia as saying, "I'm so glad Daddy died; now I can have a cat." The family adopted one, named it Mowgli, and Sylvia loved him and dressed him up in baby clothes. Mowgli went missing in 1945. 

In letters sent to Aurelia from London, Sylvia inquired often after Sappho, who grew into a "huge" adult and in 1960 gave birth to triplets. Sappho the cat was not a burden but a happy note and a comfort in Aurelia's life as it collapsed all around her. Neighbor and friend Beth Hinchliffe much later wrote a poem remembering Aurelia around 1971, suggesting that Sappho's imperturbable presence served as a kind of therapy:

And now there is only Sappho for Aurelia . . .

And through it all, through Aurelia's blinding fury,

the madness of anguish, the desperate scrabbling

to keep her memories untouched by ugliness,

Sappho sits. Kneads. Watches.

Among Aurelia's snapshots in the Plath Family Papers at the Beinecke Library was a dime-sized photo of Sappho's face, cut from another photo. The fragment was too small to photograph, but it looked like a duplicate or alternate of the one shown above: a memento only Aurelia could have gone to the trouble to make and put there. And now I have a good idea why Aurelia's American granddaughters sent her, in 1980, stationery printed with a cartoon of a large and self-satisfied tabby cat.

Aurelia had to ask someone to care for Sappho while she took annual trips to England in the early 1960s. Most likely some neighbors did. On returning to Wellesley in 1964 (July 2): "My kitchen was a smelly mess; Sappho's liver dish never washed and putrid." On returning to Wellesley in 1965 (30 June) Aurelia wrote, "Sappho, glad to see me, but unforgiving; when I pick her up, stiffens spine!"

The above photo is dated 1972. On 19 August 1975, Aurelia had terminally ill Sappho, age 16, put to sleep and grieved her, but not because Sappho had been Sylvia's cat. "I have lost the one living creature to whom I was the most important living being." In 1981 Aurelia still missed her cat and lets us know what else in life she had lost and valued: "Oh, Sappho, if only you were  here to pet, to make happy, have you lick my hand, my cheek & stretch out before the fire in blissful contentment -- greet me when I return home. Something to love and be trusted and loved by!" 

It Is a Truth Universally Acknowledged

Aurelia Plath (nee Schober) as a senior in college wrote a paper for her "English Novel" course about Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Dated December 12, 1927, and graded B-plus/A, it is in the Plath Family Papers at Beinecke Library at Yale, along with Aurelia's copy of the book.

Aurelia later noted in blue ink on its title page:

Reviewed in 1983. I'd use another term for the word "fools" today, otherwise a good paper. 

This is the only college paper of hers Aurelia preserved in her personal files. Carefully I unfolded and read it, keeping the pages open with weights as one does in rare book and manuscript rooms. On the first page her professor wrote a suggestion in red pencil. I tried to decipher it. Does it say "Figur?"

Rather than ask you to read the photo, I transcribed the page's text, below: 

[Begin]

"She (Jane Austen) had the fatal gift of observation, which is possibly the rarest gift of all, and where once a foible showed under her eye, she could not help noting it to her reader: it did not matter that she love [sic] and honored the character where she found it."  -William Dean Howells

With keen perception and unerring accuracy the realist, Jane Austen, depicted characters that moved upon the little provincial stage where she lived her own part. It was a narrow stage, whereon the chief business of its people "was attention to social duties: and their chief interest was matrimony."*

With a masterly hand Miss Austen selected a motley group of fools. Two individuals of her selection were endowed with superior mentalities, were destined to irresistibly attract each other; therefore to render the play more fascinating, Jane Austen imbued them with pride and prejudice: then, with an ironic smile partially withdrew and watched them act their parts. While she never actually stepped forward upon her stage to comment upon a player's art, yet the reader is conscious that she was standing in the wings, ironically smiling at blunders, silently applauding the rapier-like thrusts of her favorite's clever tongue, and nodding approval as good, cynical . . . .

 *Moody and Lovett

I'd have graded this paper a B-minus or a C because it draws solely on ideas presented in the book's introduction by novelist William Dean Howells. Nothing in the paper sounds original. We know from her master's thesis and her college diary that Aurelia could write much better than she did here. In Aurelia's copy of the book, only the introduction has underlinings, made with a fountain pen.

One would say that like most college students Aurelia was probably in a rush and tasked over the weekend with writing papers for her other courses. So she got the novel, read its introduction, and bingo. The sly little minx. Research, as usual, fleshes out the story:

In October Aurelia slipped and fell down the staircase in her dormitory, breaking her ankle, and was taken to Boston's Homeopathic Hospital. We know which hospital because her boyfriend Karl Terzaghi's diary says he sat at her bedside and held her hand. Karl's later diary entry of December 4, 1927, says Aurelia "still needs her crutches." The top student in her class of 1928, candidate for valedictorian, Aurelia had lost at least a week or two of coursework in six courses, and missed lectures and discussion. She was also in pain and hobbling around. Grade-wise, it could have cost her unless she caught up.

The day after her date with Karl, Aurelia bought, signed, and dated her copy of the novel: December 5, 1927, a Monday. She turned in her Austen paper the following Monday.

So like some college students (but never you or I) Aurelia took the easy way out by reading the introduction and padding out her assignment, maybe paging through the novel or reading its final page, as do some students (never you or I) who say they had no time to read the book or write the assignment because they had been away at their grandmother's funeral.

But Aurelia fell down the stairs into the dormitory's lobby, landing among students and staff, and when she walked with crutches everyone including her professors knew why. 

I'd therefore, as her prof, would have raised the grade on this paper from C or B-minus to "B," because things happen and Aurelia was a little bit special and showed some grit. Her real professor either showed a higher order of charity or was up late with a red pencil reading 40 or 60 other papers.

I Get Invited to an Academic Conference

My first glimpse of Beinecke Library

 

Me to My Sister: I was invited to give a paper at an academic conference in [expensive city].  I’ve never been there and I have a really good friend there

 

Sister: Sounds nice

 

Me: I’m not sure I can swing it financially

 

Sister: How much are they paying you

 

Me: I don’t get paid. It’s a career thing

 

Sister: If they invited you, they should pay you

 

Me: It doesn’t work that way. I pay them

 

Sister: You do?

 

Me: There’s a $350 registration fee and that gets me a group discount at a hotel but hotels are like $250 a night there, and I’d have to stay two nights at least and maybe three because my friend wants to show me around the city. I’ve always wanted to go there

 

Sister: Can’t you stay with your friend

 

Me: She has a roommate who sleeps on the couch. Rents are so expensive there

 

Sister: Well at least they pay for your plane ticket?

 

Me: No, they don’t do that

 

Sister: Then why would you go

 

Me: It’s kind of an honor to be invited, they’re really interested my research and I’d meet other scholars who do similar topics and hear what they’re researching, and maybe get my name out there and make some friends who work at universities who might tell other professors in the field what I’m doing or at least that work is being done. That’s the value of it. Plus I could put it on my resume. I figure it will cost about $2000 with food and rides to and from the airport

 

Sister: They don’t even feed you

 

Me: We get one lunch

 

Sister: 

 

Me: Guess I shouldn’t go, should save the money to do research at Yale

The Most Popular Plath Posts of 2025

Aurelia Plath in this note is outraged that the Smith College infirmary in 1951 gave Sylvia Plath sleeping pills (the two words Aurelia wrote in Gregg shorthand).

Of 2025's total of 44 AureliaPlath.info posts most readers favored the posts I favored, of primary materials and new connections made. I thought I was weird to be obsessed for a week with Sylvia Plath's hairbands and hair ribbons but wrote about them anyway and readers were interested! Sylvia's many mentions of sleeping pills and "phenobarbs," drugs she used to try to kill herself, I had never seen listed or tracked, so I did that. I am glad that readers saw value in that post and hope some might consider further research into Sylvia Plath and drugs.

Having forced myself to read the three books about Assia Wevill now in print (all by U.S. scholar Dr. Julie Goodspeed-Chadwick, whom I met in December) I linked Aurelia with Assia for the very first time. They met at Court Green in 1967, really liked each other, and exchanged several letters.

This year's big Plath news was the Plath Family Papers opening for research at Yale University's Beinecke Library. The day before the archive officially opened I was there and also for the next entire workweek, mostly reading Aurelia's diaries, begun with hope in 1924 and ending in 1990. And the Plath and Greenwood heirloom family photographs, stunning and unique, open a casement window into Sylvia's paternal and maternal ancestry and give faces to names.

My fiercest thanks to readers who donated funds for transportation to, from, and within the city of New Haven, Connecticut.

I'm honored that you follow AureliaPlath.info. Despite the many advantages of blogspot.com I became aware this year that it's viewed as a hobbyist's platform, and passion for Plath is too important to keep siloed. So in 2026 I plan to join the bigger league of Substack. Most articles there are free to read. I will keep you informed.

Readers' favorites in 2025:

"I Am the Jew" (January)

"Sylvia Plath and Sleeping Pills" (January) 

"Sylvia Plath and Phyllis McGinley" (March)

"Sylvia Plath's Hair Ribbons and Hairbands" (June)  

"Pleased With Everything: The Plath Family Papers at Yale" (July) 

"Sylvia Died Yesterday" (August) 

"Aurelia Plath and Assia Wevill: Tight Wires Between Them" (October)