Raymond Chandler and Taki

[moon_custafer]

Raymond Chandler and Taki, a photo by richardschave on Flickr.

In Trouble Is My Business, Marlowe finds himself (unwillingly) in the office of a gangster/politician who strokes a Persian cat as he sneers. It's a black Persian, not a white one, and behaves so realistically (she gets bored and biting her master, or wanders off to sit on his desk and wash one single toe on her left hind paw) that I figured Chandler must have had cats himself. Well: it seems his secretary was a cat; that is to say, his cat, Taki, liked to sleep on his manuscripts. So much so, apparently, that she found her way into one story.

Comments

[donald hutton (from livejournal.com)]

In the Bond movies Blofeld and his Turkish Angora cat never really interact. He strokes it and often carts it around but that's it. The cat usually totally ignores him: except in a couple of frames of "You Only Live Twice". When the ninja army manages to start pumping rocket propelled grenades into Blofeld's control room the cat freaks out at the movie special effects squibs going off a foot or so away from him. Donald Pleasence tries to hold on but, just before the cut, you can see that the cat is determined to quit show business. One wonders if it was a director's decision to have Pleasence's character with a big scar down his face or if the cat really put one there!

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

Apparently Mike Myers worked quite hard to put Ted, the sphinx that played Mr. Bigglesworth, at ease, and the cat's owner and trainer pointed out that Ted is often in the scene longer than scripted because he fell asleep on Dr. Evil.

Lance Henriksen, OTOH, does not appear to have thought through (http://youtu.be/qatuMoOGr9s) the complexities of holding a non-professional cat while talking on the phone.