A Letter From The Publisher: Dec. 7, 1981

As a boy, TIME Associate Editor J.D. Reed was indifferent to cats. Recalls he: “For a lot of men, cats are an acquired taste, like eating snails. A boy growing up in the Midwest wants a dog. It’s a macho thing.” Later in life, though, Reed’s attitudes softened enough for him to work at writing poetry in a study shared with two Siamese cats—Emily and Hilda, named after Poets Emily Dickinson and Hilda Doolittle. That blend of interest in the literary and the feline eminently qualified Reed to write this issue’s cover story on America’s love-hate relationship with cats.

Appropriately enough, given the history of mutual suspicion between human beings and felines, an informal poll of staffers who worked on the story reveals a roughly even split between cat defenders and detractors. “Cats are more photogenic than dogs,” says Photographer Neil Leifer, who took the cover photo and five other pictures for the story, “but I’m much more a dog person.” Leifer owns two dogs, a Hungarian sheep dog and a golden retriever, and has no plans to inflict a cat on them. Rosemarie Tauris, one of the story’s reporter-researchers, has no pets at present, but once was the happy owner of an alley cat named Fritz. She confesses to “a love for the cuddliness, the softness of cats.” Reporter-Researcher Georgia Harbison, who contributed much of the reporting for the cover, provides a home for Victoria, a ten-year-old Persian Angora with silky white hair and green eyes. Fond though she is of Victoria, Harbison stops short of a blanket endorsement of the whole species. Says she: “Victoria is not like a lot of other cats. She is extremely affectionate, and she’ll flirt with strangers because she wants to be petted.” Any such offerings of affection are wasted on Senior Editor William F. Ewald, who edited the story. Says Ewald: “The only animals I like are the edible ones.”

Correspondent Maureen Dowd, who joined TIME’s staff last September from the Washington Star, and who was working on her first cover story, found the subject beguiling and familiar. She grew up in Washington with five cats who produced 25 kittens. Though she proposed such dignified names as Princess and Napoleon for the kittens, her older brothers and sister insisted on calling all of them J. Fred Muggs, after NBC’s famous chimpanzee. Sums up Dowd: “After years of covering public officials, I found cats a pleasant relief. Cats are every bit as narcissistic as politicians, but, happily, they are much less talkative.”