Chéri
The other great Colette study of jealousy and possession, from the courtesan's world instead of the marriage bed.
Read our take
The Cat
by Colette
A new marriage and a beloved cat, and a jealousy that turns out to run the wrong way — Colette's coldest short novel.
- 1933
About Colette
The story, briefly
Spoiler-freeAlain Amparat is a young man of settled tastes who loves two things: the family house he grew up in and Saha, his grey pedigree cat. When he marries the modern, impatient Camille, the three of them move into a borrowed flat high above Paris, and Camille discovers that she is not the first attachment in her husband's life. Published in 1933, The Cat is a short, exact novel in which a marriage is tested and found wanting through the presence of an animal Colette refuses to treat as a symbol. (The full plot, including the ending, is below.)
The story, in more detail
Colette spent her life among cats and wrote about them more seriously than almost any other novelist. The Cat is the fullest result: a marriage story in which the animal is a genuine third party, with her own preferences, dignity, and will, rather than a metaphor for something in the humans. Saha is drawn with the same attention Colette gives Alain and Camille, and the novel's power depends on the reader taking her exactly as seriously as they do.
The book is very short and built on a simple domestic situation: a new husband who cannot let go of his childhood house and his cat, and a new wife who expected to be the center of the life she married into. Colette lets the ordinary furniture of a marriage — a flat, a balcony, a routine — carry the whole weight, and turns a small household into a study of instinct against modern arrangement.
It first reached readers serialized in the weekly Marianne in the spring of 1933 and appeared as a book the same year. It is generally counted among Colette's major short novels.
The full plot
Alain Amparat is about to marry Camille Malmert. He is a young man of conservative, sensual tastes, deeply attached to the old family house and garden where he grew up and to Saha, the grey pedigree cat he has raised. Camille is his opposite — quick, modern, direct in her appetites — and she believes marriage will make her the whole of his world. While the family house is being renovated, the couple moves into a friend's ninth-floor flat, and Saha comes with them.
In the confined, high apartment the marriage begins to show its fault line. Alain returns constantly, in feeling and often in person, to the house and to the cat; Camille finds herself sharing her husband with an animal that plainly prefers him and plainly does not care for her. Her jealousy is real, and it has nowhere to go, because its object is a cat.
How it ends — spoilers ahead
Alone with Saha on the ninth-floor balcony, Camille pushes the cat over the edge. Saha survives the fall. When Alain works out what his wife has done — and watches how she behaves toward the animal afterward — the marriage is finished for him: a woman who could try to kill Saha is a woman he cannot love or trust. He takes the cat and returns to his mother's house and garden, leaving Camille behind. The novel gives the animal the last, unanswerable claim on him.
Why we recommend it
An animal taken completely seriously
Few novelists write a cat as a full third party in a marriage. Colette does, and the book's disturbing force depends on it.
A marriage undone by something small
No affair, no money, no grand betrayal — just a flat, a balcony, and a jealousy with nowhere to go. Colette makes the domestic lethal.
Her coldest ending
The novel resolves without comfort or moral, letting the cat hold the final claim. It is among her most quietly ruthless books.
What this book explores
The people in its pages
Alain Amparat
A young man of conservative, sensual tastes, bound to his childhood house and his cat — and unable to make room in either for a wife.
Camille Amparat
Alain's modern, impatient wife, who expected to be the center of the marriage and finds herself second to a cat.
Saha
Alain's grey pedigree cat — the third party in the marriage, written with her own will and dignity, and the novel's final claim.
Bring it to book club
- Colette insists Saha is not a symbol. Does the novel let you read the cat as one anyway, and does it matter?
- Is Camille a villain, or a young wife driven to a cruel act by a marriage that never made room for her?
- Alain chooses the cat and the family house over his wife. Is that fidelity, immaturity, or clear sight?
Timeline
1933
The Cat is serialized in the weekly Marianne from April to June, then published as a book the same year.
Book editions
Hardcover
- Hardcover
- 1933
Paperback
- Paperback
- Antonia White
Ebook
- Ebook
Reader reviews
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The Cat: frequently asked questions
Who wrote The Cat?
The French novelist Colette. La Chatte was published in 1933.
What is The Cat about?
A young man, Alain, loves his cat Saha and his childhood home. When he marries the modern, impatient Camille, her jealousy of the cat becomes the fault line that breaks the marriage.
What happens to the cat?
Saha is the third point of the marriage's triangle, and the crisis of the novel turns on Camille's jealousy of her. Saha survives the story; the full plot, including how it resolves, is below.
Is The Cat based on Colette's own cats?
It draws on her lifelong attention to cats, whom she observed and wrote about closely. No single real cat is documented as the model for Saha.
How long is The Cat?
It is a short novel — a novella, readable in an evening — and is often counted among Colette's major works of short fiction.