Raymond Chandler’s black Persian cat was originally named “Take” (the Japanese word for bamboo). Chandler changed the spelling to “Taki” because he and his wife, Cissy, were tired of explaining that the name had two syllables.
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As a young man, Raymond Chandler had experience as a (not very successful) journalist but didn’t decide to write fiction until he was past forty. At that time, he had lost his job, the country was well into the Great Depression, and Chandler badly needed a way to make a living. He was a regular reader of the “pulp” mystery magazines—especially Black Mask—and decided to begin by writing for them. He taught himself the methods of crime fiction by analyzing a novelette by Erle Stanley Gardner.
Chandler’s first professional story was published in Black Mask in 1933. His first novel, The Big Sleep, was published in 1939. This was also the first Phillip Marlowe novel. Others followed—all successful. Most were made into films. Chandler also collaborated on the scripts for other noir films, including Double Indemnity.
Taki came into Chandler’s writing life at about the same time that it started and she stayed. As Chandler said years later in a letter to Charles Morton at the The Atlantic Monthly:
A man named Inkstead took some pictures of me for Harper’s Bazaar a while ago (I never quite found out why) and one of me holding my secretary in my lap came out very well indeed….
The secretary, I should perhaps add, is a black Persian cat, 14 years old, and I call her that because she has been around me ever since I began to write, usually sitting on the paper I wanted to use or the copy I wanted to revise, sometimes leaning up against the typewriter and sometimes just quietly gazing out of the window from a corner of the desk, as much as to say, “The stuff you’re doing’s a waste of my time, bud.”
(The rest of the letter is here.)
Chandler wrote many letters, often during the night when he had insomnia. He often wrote to friends about Taki.
Our cat is growing positively tyrannical. If she finds herself alone anywhere she emits blood curdling yells until somebody comes running. She sleeps on a table in the service porch and now demands to be lifted up and down from it. She gets warm milk about eight o'clock at night and starts yelling for it about 7.30.
Chandler wrote to another friend:
I said something which gave you to think I hated cats. But gad, sir, I am one of the most fanatical cat lovers in the business. If you hate them, I may learn to hate you. If your allergies hate them, I will tolerate the situation to the best of my ability.
And sometimes he helped Taki write to other cats.
Come around sometime when your face is clean and we shall discuss the state of the world, the foolishness of humans, the prevalence of horse meat, although we prefer the tenderloin side of a porterhouse, and our common difficulty in getting doors opened at the right time and meals served at more frequent intervals. I have got my staff up to five a day, but there is still room for improvement.
Note the term, staff. Taki was a pretty good human-trainer.
Raymond Chandler’s crime novels don’t really need an introduction, but not everyone knows that he was also a very fine essayist. “The Simple Art of Murder” is considered some of the best writing about crime writing. Well worth a look. (Perhaps Taki helped with it.)