{"id":101000,"date":"2016-07-29T19:06:51","date_gmt":"2016-07-29T23:06:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=101000"},"modified":"2016-07-31T21:05:59","modified_gmt":"2016-08-01T01:05:59","slug":"saving-chester-himess-cat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/07\/29\/saving-chester-himess-cat\/","title":{"rendered":"Saving Chester Himes\u2019s Cat"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Chester Himes with his cat, Griot.<\/p><\/div>\n

Chester Himes and John Alfred Williams met in 1961 and soon began a long and occasionally tempestuous correspondence about their personal lives and the difficulty of finding a fair reception as African American writers in the publishing world. By the late sixties, Himes had moved to Spain, where he wrote Williams frequently about the privations of life abroad. In the letters below, they discuss Himes\u2019s beloved cat, Griot. These excerpts come from\u00a0<\/em>Dear Chester, Dear John<\/a>, a 2008 collection of the pair\u2019s correspondence. Himes died in 1984; Williams passed away last summer<\/a>, at eighty-nine.\u00a0<\/em>
<\/p>\n

Chester Himes
C\/ Duque de Zaragoza, 2
Alicante, Espana<\/p>\n

10 February 1969<\/p>\n

Dear John,<\/p>\n

Sometime when you and Lori, or either one of you, are in a supermarket, will you look at the label of a cat food called Treat and take down the name and address of the manufacturing company for me. When we were in New York year before last we found a cat food of a mixture of fish and liver made by Treat that our cat would eat\u2014which is the only cat food I have ever known him to eat. When we are in France we feed him on canned colin that has the trade name of Pom Pom Rouge, which costs about thirty-five cents a can, and usually we take along about fifty cans when we go to other countries. Our cat has always been very difficult about his food; rather than eat anything he doesn\u2019t like he will starve himself to death. He will eat most beef liver, and he ate some fresh fish we found in Amsterdam, but he doesn\u2019t care for this soft Spanish liver, and he won\u2019t eat any of the fish. So if I get the address of the manufacturers of Treat I am going to order him a case or two \u2026 Anyway, if you remember about this Treat sometime, I will appreciate its address.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

March 19, 1969<\/p>\n

Dear Chester:<\/p>\n

We held off writing, looking for your cat food company, which neither of us is able to do, unfortunately. Things here are as messy as ever. My mother\u2019s back in the hospital with her second coronary in just one and a half years; my oldest boy has his ass on his shoulder because I told him he wasn\u2019t shaping up worth a damn, even though he just turned twenty-one, and I\u2019m getting sick and tired of having to work so hard for a living. That\u2019s the way I feel today.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

24 March 1969<\/p>\n

Dear John,<\/p>\n

Thanks for your letter. I\u2019m sorry that you are having so much trouble with your mother and your son, but at least your son has a great chance to straighten up, if for no more reason than his youth. It becomes difficult to overcome trouble as one grows older. It\u2019s the same with our cat. If he doesn\u2019t learn to eat what he\u2019s got he\u2019s going to die \u2026 Have Connie and Ed really left for Mexico? If not I\u2019d like to ask you to telephone Connie and have her find out the name and address of the manufacturer of Treat cat food, which is sold in the supermarket across the street from the Albert. I would\u2019ve written her direct, but Connie and I have not been on the best of terms \u2026<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

March 30, 1969<\/p>\n

Dear Chester:<\/p>\n

You\u2019ll be pleased to know that Lori persevered, even if I didn\u2019t, and dug up Tabby Treat, Usen Products Company, Woburn, Massachusetts 01901. And I hope this information saves that cat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chester Himes and John Alfred Williams met in 1961 and soon began a long and occasionally tempestuous correspondence about their personal lives and the difficulty of finding a fair reception as African American writers in the publishing world. By the late sixties, Himes had moved to Spain, where he wrote Williams frequently about the privations […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1900],"tags":[19918,8017,3825,5733,23610,23612,182,23611,215],"class_list":["post-101000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-correspondence","tag-cat-food","tag-cats","tag-chester-himes","tag-correspondence-2","tag-griot","tag-john-alfred-williams","tag-letters","tag-life-abroad","tag-spain"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nIn Which Chester Himes Petitions to Save His Cat, Griot<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The cat was a picky eater, and Himes was determined to keep him well-fed.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link 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