Chaos and Control: On Bohumil Hrabal's "All My Cats"

Bohumil Hrabal | All My Cats | New Directions | 2019 | 128 Pages | Translated by Paul Wilson

“What are we going to do with all those cats?”  Throughout author Bohumil Hrabal’s memoir of cats, kittens, chaos, and control, these words are often uttered by the author’s wife, who is frequently brought to tears by the flocks and droves of cats attracted to their home.  However, it is not the wife’s laments that strike deeply into the readers’ hearts, so much as the author’s own musings and reactions to the cats that fill his home, his emotions, and his every waking thought.

The cats are a source of joy.  Author Hrabal opens the book explaining the daily procedure at his country home in Kersko:  the doors are opened, the cats allowed to enter the home, fed, warmed, and then the author, his wife, and five feral cats all snuggle lovingly in bed, shielded against the cold and chaos that reign just outside the door.  “Those mornings, when the five cats would crawl in bed with us, were moments of family bliss.  The cats were our children.”  This cozy, familial connection seems to ooze warmth, security, and a level of comfort.  Yet we learn that though these moments bring the author “moments of bliss,” the moments not spent in this cozy pose are enough to drive Hrabal to madness.

Hrabal splits his time between a city house in Prague and his country home in Kersko.  The cats enjoy a largely feral life in Kersko.  Set in the 1960s, this story occurs before mobile spay/neuter clinics, before Trap-Neuter-Release programs, and in a part of the world where having a fully indoor cat was somewhat of an anomaly.  In fact, as Hrabal nervously notes in the early pages of his memoir, hunters are actually rewarded with 30 crowns for every cat they shoot, and the scientific institutes in Prague pay 50 crowns each for cats upon which they can conduct sadistic research.

As a result, Hrabal finds himself unable to relax when he is at his home in Prague.  While he is in the city under the guise of working hard on his books, and finding inspiration, he instead finds himself obsessed with the well-being of his cats, and often drives or takes the bus to Kersko to check on them.  He cannot rest until he has accounted for all of the small feline heads that watch him come and go through the fence.

Over time, this obsession becomes a madness.  He is an author, and his associates often praise him for his ideal living situation, assuming that having two homes between which he can travel freely allows him to pursue endless inspiration.  Since he travels so frequently, he must be making the most of his space and time, with creativity simply flowing from his fingers onto the pages he writes.

In reality, Hrabal finds himself unable to work.  He cannot concentrate on anything but his cats and their safety.  In order to create, he must let the mind run free, in attempting to care for his cats, he is attempting to apply order to chaos.  As a result, the order in his mind responds by turning to chaos.  In her New Yorker article, “The Violent Insights of Bohumil Hrabal,” Becca Rothfield notes that Hrabal’s “animal within” leads him to a complicated tightrope act of logic and animal instincts.  She writes:

In a fit of desperation, he contemplates suicide. And yet, he concludes, “I didn’t want to hang myself. I wanted to be in the world. There were still things I wanted to write, even if it were only this indictment about how I betrayed my tomcat.” In the end, Hrabal’s cats keep him alive—and not only because they appeal to his overdeveloped sense of guilt.

His involvement with the cats is that of a caretaker, a parent, and a cultivator.  While he initially appreciates that the cats are wild, feral beasts that simply appreciate warmth and a good meal from time to time, he soon finds himself in a myriad of difficult positions.  When his favorite cat gives birth to a litter of five, for example, he feels that it is his personal responsibility to deal with the influx of kittens.  He does so not rationally, or humanely, but in the most personal manner possible- by destroying them in a mail bag with an axe.  His need for control over the life and breath of each cat is so great that he cannot handle the doctor destroying them with chloroform, or allowing Fate to dictate the futures of these little cats.  

Again and again, Hrabal insists on handling the destiny of each cat and kitten that approaches his home in Kersko personally.  Though this tortures his mind, leading to pervasive thoughts of suicide, he becomes a God-like figure amongst the cats, doling out life, death, cozy beds, and warm meals, all for the sense of order it brings and the compassion provided by the cats.  As other elements of his life slip out of the author’s grasp, his involvement in the welfare of the cats becomes greater and greater.

What begins as a tender, loving family scene soon slips into madness, as the cats fail to conform to the ideals of the author.  They give birth in unexpected places.  They combine litters.  They have complex relationships with each other.  None of this can be controlled by the author, who eschews the option of involving the local vet.  It is expected that spaying and neutering feral animals was not standard practice in the Czech countryside in the 1960s; however, one gets the sense that Hrabal’s need for control over his colony of cats excludes bringing in outside help. Eventually, the time comes when the author must exercise the ultimate level of control over his cats for the welfare of his community, creating an insufferable rift in his reality.

Chaos and control are two elements that creative individuals often struggle to identify and play with equally.  The very notion of creation includes both a chaotic “what will be, will be” reality, while those who create must carefully control their output to make sense to audiences, and to bring about their intended reaction.  Particularly when things bring pleasure, the sense of control is heightened.  As Hrabal finds more and more enjoyment of his cats, his desire to preserve that sense of wellness and comfort becomes an obsessive level of control.  While a feral cat colony is, by its own nature, ruled by chaos, Hrabal attempts to set his own controls to preserve his own mental health.

Instead, his efforts remove the chaos from the lives of the cats, and plant it solidly in his own mind.  His control efforts bring him to kill, and create internal madness.  Driven to the point of suicide, the sense of order that once allowed the author to create has now become chaos.  Unable to create or control, the author finds himself in a position where he must address his wife’s long-standing question:  “What are we going to do with all those cats?”