Madame Askew and The Grand Arbiter

Originally posted to our Patreon

Please allow me the pleasure of introducing Antigone Pinkynose, companion kitty to Professor Antoine Saint Claire, doctor of classical literature at the Sorbonne. Sweet, little Antigone started her life in the back of a small Parisian bakery, when the young apprentice was kind enough to give her mother and siblings a warm basket in the back corner of the storage room in exchange for her mother’s fine skills as a mouser. As the kittens grew older, however, the head baker was less than keen for a shop full of kitties. The kind professor, who came in each morning for pastries during his walk to class, adopted little Antigone and promptly started to include her in his morning walks as well as taking her along on his adventures as an academic.

Far from her humble beginnings in the bakery, Antigone thrived as an academic cat. With the flick of her elegant–and voluminous!–tail and the twitch of her little pink nose, Antigone was easily able to find the most obscure references. She was soon as conversant in Ancient Greek and Latin as she was in French and English. And quite as able to ignore the Professor in all four when she chose! Students preferred to spend a happy hour with her in the library first before submitting their translations and essays to Professor Saint Clair as her signature whisker twitch and impatient paw was enough to alert them to grave errors… as long as the students remembered that they should also give Mademoiselle Pinkynose the proper allotment of cuddles first.

Mademoiselle Pinkynose kept her dear professor company at all of his lectures and book tours. Some even suggested she was responsible for his more poetic and popular translations, at least as a muse. When avid readers requested the Professor’s autograph in a book, they as often as not also request a little paw print from the dear little Mademoiselle.

The Professor and little Antigone spent many happy years as partners, and though the Sorbonne would never issue a degree to a kitty, everyone knew she was a feline of unrivaled wit and intellect. When Antigone was quite an elder kitty, she took her last sleep by her dear professor’s fireplace and dreamed sweetly of cream and poetry.  The Professor had commissioned a fine marble statue in the Grecian style in homage to his dear Antigone which he positioned in a place of honour deep in the library stacks, near Antigone’s fabric dictionaries.

Antigone has gone onto her forever haunt where she no doubt continues to advise on academic and poetic matters, chasing down the perfect word for any written missives and warming the laps of her new humans when they are struggling to find just the right phrase.

Salut et Hourra a la Belle Antigone!