Thomas Stearns (T S) Eliot (1888-1965) was a giant literary figure: one of the major poets of the 20th century, as well as essayist, publisher, playwright, and literary critic. He was born in St Louis, Missouri into a prominent Boston Brahmin family, but moved to England at the age of 25 and settled and married here, becoming a British subject in 1927.

Within a year of arriving in Britain, Eliot had published his first major poem, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915), which came to be regarded as a masterpiece of the Modernist movement, and he followed that up with some of the best-known poems in the English language, including The Waste Land (1922), The Hollow Men (1925), Ash Wednesday (1930), and Four Quartets (1943).

Eliot also had his whimsical side, however, and in 1939 published Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. This was a series of light poems about cats and their traits which he’d written throughout the thirties in letters to his godchildren (“Old Possum” was fellow poet Ezra Pound’s nickname for him). The best-known poem from that collection, Macavity the Mystery Cat, is the one that arrested my attention the moment I read it (or heard it recited) when I was a lad (it may well have been the only poem from the Book of Practical Cats that I read or heard recited, given that it was the “stand out” that primary school teachers regularly latched onto).

Eliot was a big fan of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories and the character of Macavity is a literary allusion to Moriarty, the arch-villain and mastermind of those stories (Holmes dubs Moriarty the “Napoleon of crime”, which is how Macavity is described in the last line of the poem). I loved that repeating final line: “Macavity’s not there!”. It conjures up the trope of the master jewel thief or gentleman spy, always one step ahead of the Law, always outwitting his pursuers. You can imagine the nonchalance.

But of course in reality it’s a cat, so it’s the spilled milk, the feathers on the lawn, the crash of a dustbin lid, the scratch on the sofa…and of course he’s never there. The little devil’s scarpered!

Here’s a recording of the man himself reciting the poem:

Macavity’s a Mystery Cat: he’s called the Hidden Paw—
For he’s the master criminal who can defy the Law.
He’s the bafflement of Scotland Yard, the Flying Squad’s despair:
For when they reach the scene of crime—Macavity’s not there!

Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity,
He’s broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity.
His powers of levitation would make a fakir stare,
And when you reach the scene of crime—Macavity’s not there!
You may seek him in the basement, you may look up in the air—
But I tell you once and once again, Macavity’s not there!

Macavity’s a ginger cat, he’s very tall and thin;
You would know him if you saw him, for his eyes are sunken in.
His brow is deeply lined with thought, his head is highly domed;
His coat is dusty from neglect, his whiskers are uncombed.
He sways his head from side to side, with movements like a snake;
And when you think he’s half asleep, he’s always wide awake.

Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity,
For he’s a fiend in feline shape, a monster of depravity.
You may meet him in a by-street, you may see him in the square—
But when a crime’s discovered, then Macavity’s not there!

He’s outwardly respectable. (They say he cheats at cards.)
And his footprints are not found in any file of Scotland Yard’s
And when the larder’s looted, or the jewel-case is rifled,
Or when the milk is missing, or another Peke’s been stifled,
Or the greenhouse glass is broken, and the trellis past repair
Ay, there’s the wonder of the thing! Macavity’s not there!

And when the Foreign Office find a Treaty’s gone astray,
Or the Admiralty lose some plans and drawings by the way,
There may be a scrap of paper in the hall or on the stair—
But it’s useless to investigate—Macavity’s not there!
And when the loss has been disclosed, the Secret Service say:
It must have been Macavity!’—but he’s a mile away.
You’ll be sure to find him resting, or a-licking of his thumb;
Or engaged in doing complicated long division sums.

Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity,
There never was a Cat of such deceitfulness and suavity.
He always has an alibi, and one or two to spare:
At whatever time the deed took place: MACAVITY WASN’T THERE !
And they say that all the Cats whose wicked deeds are widely known
(I might mention Mungojerrie, I might mention Griddlebone)
Are nothing more than agents for the Cat who all the time
Just controls their operations: the Napoleon of Crime!