Images(3)

Wild Cat - The Scottish Bestiary

Artist John Bellany (Cockenzie and Port Seton, Scotland, 1942 - 2013)

AssociatedAssociated with George MacKay Brown (Stromness, Orkney, Scotland, 1921 - 1996)

Date1986

Mediumetching on paper

ClassificationsPrints

DimensionsOverall: 58.4 x 39.4cm (23 x 15 1/2in.)

AcquisitionPurchased in 1986 with assistance from the National Fund for Acquisitions.

LocationView by Appointment - Aberdeen Treasure Hub

Object numberABDAG007562.4

Keywords

Bestiary

About MeOne of twenty prints by seven Scottish artists for the artist's book, 'The Scottish Bestiary', illustrating the writing in poetry and prose of George Mackay Brown. The printed text on the opposite page reads:
WILD CAT
YOU WON'T CATCH ME blinking beside coal fires, and purring when some delicate
finger strokes me.
You'll never see me pleading for pieces of cooked fish, or liver, or chicken.
I have no intention of curling into a soft ball on anybody's knee, or
in an armchair.
Pooh, look at the house of cats going in their fine, soft coats, black and marmalade
and tortoiseshell!
All they can do is chase voles and starlings.
If they saw me coming, they'd go leaping and schreeching into the highest tree in the garden!
They come, those spineless lickers-of-milk-out-of-saucers, from Egypt and
such places. I expect the Romans took them here, in ships, to keep their ladies from being bored.
Me, I'm a real Scottish cat. I'm as tough as heather and fierce as a
mountain torrent.
I take hares and grouse in the fall and flash of my claws.
I like to go out at night, when my sister the moon is prowling softly at midnight.
My eyes change like the changing moon. (An Irish poet noticed that).
Poet and moon and cat are all kin. They go in lonely circuits.
I have cousins in Africa: lion and tiger and cheetah. They belong to the sun.
They blaze, they rage like fire. 'King of beasts' - pooh, the lion is welcome to
his crown.
Silent as a lochan in a mountain fold I lie till the moon rises. The skein of water
unwinds to an edge of granite, a declivity, then I leap pure and fierce and swift,
a snarling cataract.
Prey? They have drifted, life-long, yearning for my claws and my teeth, the hare
and the grouse and the vole. With joy and terror they wait for the tryst.