Correspondence from Cochin the Cat

Isabella Stewart Gardner was a noted animal enthusiast. Her love for dogs, particularly fox terriers, is well-known and well-photographed with images of fox terrier puppies peppering Gardner’s guest books, and four dogs—Kitty Wink, Patty Boy, Foxey, and Rowley— explicitly mentioned in her will. She also had an enthusiasm for racehorses, owning one named Halton (who she considered to be ‘the best of the lot!’) and leaving a charitable donation to the MSPCA for the well-being of horses.

A love for dogs and horses did not preclude Isabella Stewart Gardner from having a soft spot for cats, both large and small. An anecdote repeated in the Boston Globe in 1897 recounts a zoo visit during which Gardner led a toothless lion named Rex by the mane on a walk around the building.

Smaller, tamer house cats were also featured in Gardner’s life. Some letters housed in the museum’s display cases shed light on a particularly charming interaction. Gardner had a close friendship with the Japanese art historian and philosopher Okakura Kakuzō (1863–1913), starting with his arrival in Boston in 1904, and ending at his death in 1913. During this near-decade of friendship, the two bonded over Japanese culture, poetry, and art.

Gardner and Okakura also exchanged gifts. In early 1905, Okakura held a candlelit tea ceremony at Fenway Court and, in September of that year, sent Gardner an elaborate tea set of her own.

The cutest gift in this series of exchanges was definitely one given by Gardner to Okakura—a kitten. Unlike Gardner’s beloved fox terriers, the Museum does not have any photographs of this cat, whose existence is only known from a group of letters from Okakura and Dodge Macknight.

According to these letters, Gardner gave Okakura a small, long-haired white cat in late 1910. The first letter (‘written’ by the cat but sent by Okakura), dated 22 November 1910, introduces Gardner to the cat’s new name, Kowun, which Okakura translates as ‘The Lonesome Cloud.’ This, evidently, was a fitting name for a cat of lofty “quality and high descent,” as well as the cat’s wispy white appearance.

Of course, a cat cannot only have one name. According to this letter, Kowun can also be called “Kōtan in moments of tenderness or Kochan if they are silly.” The ‘silly’ name must have stuck, because the cat is called Kochan or Cochin from here on out.

Okakura seems to have been charmed by silly Cochin, but when he returned to Japan in 1911, he was unable to take the cat along. He brought a photograph of Cochin back with him, and left the animal in the care of American artist Dodge Macknight, for whom the Macknight Room is named. Okakura lamented this separation, and in a letter to Cochin, he tells the cat that his “breast has missed your nightly tread, the table was suddenly large without your prowling presence.” He also attached a small parcel of Japanese catnip to this letter, as a treat for Cochin.

Like Okakura, Macknight sent Gardner a letter “from Cochin,” apparently thanking her for the cat’s new home. Cochin praises Macknight for sheltering him in “such a nice home where I get real things to eat instead of horrible canned goods,” and implores Gardner to come and visit the pair.

We do not know what happened to Cochin after Macknight’s letter from 1913, but the cat’s correspondence is still visible in the Blue Room and Long Gallery of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Lift up the cloth on the Okakura Case, or peer into the Modern Painters and Sculptors Case, and you can see them for yourself.

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