What do we make of Baudelaire’s cat? One could say, well, he has simply taken a poetic idea for a walk through his mind: a form of proto-surrealism. In that, we can see why Baudelaire is considered so important in the development of the modern. For all its rather nineteenth-century imagery (opals and philtres (the original word)) there is plenty about this poem that is as contemporary today as it was when devised.
Yet, the way the poem is couched, the cat – which would, in the most obvious instance, be an opium-induced hallucination – cannot be such, because it is compared to a drug. Or perhaps Charles is so far gone that he is confused.
The cat in his head is also one he is able to stroke and become perfumed by; he can look inside himself and stare into the eyes of the cat in his brain.
Perhaps we are back to opiates once more.
Or maybe the cat is the spirit of poetry itself or his mews … muse.

The Cat

As if he owned the place, a cat
meanders through my mind,
sleek and proud, yet so discreet
in making known his will

that I hear music when he mews,
and even when he purrs
a tender timbre in the sound
compels my consciousness–

a secret rhythm penetrates
to unsuspected depths,
obsessive as a line of verse
and potent as a drug:

All woes are spirited away,
I hear ecstatic news–
it seems a telling language has
no need of words at all.

My heart, assenting instrument,
is masterfully played;
no other bow across its strings
can draw such music out

the way this cat’s uncanny voice
–seraphic, alien–
can reconcile discordant strains
into close harmony!

One night his brindled fur gave off
a perfume so intense
I seemed to be embalmed because
(just once!) I fondled him…

Familiar spirit, genius, judge,
the cat presides–inspires
events that he appears to spurn,
half goblin and half god!

and when my spellbound eyes at last
relinquish worship of
this cat they love to contemplate
and look inside myself,

I find to my astonishment
like living opals there
his fiery pupils, embers which
observe me fixedly.