Stray cats

The Stray cats are a hungry, wary group that Norma Jeane Baker feeds during the summer at the Captain’s House. They begin as animals waiting at the back door for food; later, their image returns in Norma Jeane Baker’s vision at the premiere of Some Like It Hot, where she blames them for the death of her unborn child. The cats’ narrative importance lies in that painful transformation: creatures she tries to care for become, in her mind, agents of a loss the story does not establish they caused.

Arrival at the Captain’s House

From the second week of the stay at the Captain’s House, Norma Jeane Baker feeds the local strays, against the advice of The Playwright. At first there is only one: a skeletal black tom with cropped ears. A similarly gaunt female joins him, visibly pregnant, and soon about ten cats wait outside the back door. Their growing number gives the feeding an almost ritual quality, repeated through the summer despite The Playwright’s expectation that the kindness will attract more animals.

The cats do not behave like affectionate pets. They keep a measured distance, crouching in silence until Norma Jeane Baker sets out plates on the lawn. Then they spring forward, eat quickly and methodically, and run off. When she initially tries to approach and stroke them, they hiss, recoil, and show their teeth. Their repeated visits therefore bring both contact and refusal: they accept food from her, but do not accept her attempt to turn that exchange into intimacy.

Food, Shelter, and the Playwright’s Warning

The cats’ presence extends beyond the lawn. A door from outside leads to the cellar, making it possible that one of them entered and could not find its way out. The possibility remains conjectural, but The Playwright goes downstairs to rescue the creature he thinks may be trapped. The episode gives their presence a second, uneasy dimension: the animals might be vulnerable to the house as well as gathered around it for food.

The Playwright asks Norma Jeane Baker to stop feeding them, reasoning that more will keep coming and that she cannot feed every cat in Maine. She agrees, but does not follow through. She continues for the rest of the summer, and The Playwright understands the persistence as a striking expression of her will: in essential matters, she can overpower him, although he has the advantage in smaller ones. Her feeding is not simply a response to advice or convenience; the novel emphasizes the gap between her promise and her sustained action.

The Pregnant Cat and the Rabbit

The pregnant female becomes part of a separate, disturbing scene Norma Jeane Baker remembers. Seen from a window, the cat plays with a young rabbit, allowing the bloodied, stunned creature to struggle a short distance toward escape before pouncing again and tearing at it. The rabbit’s hindquarters and still-moving legs remain as the scene’s brutal final image. The Playwright does not let Norma Jeane Baker intervene. He regards the attack as nature, and the rabbit is already dying.

This memory sharpens the contrast between feeding and protection. Norma Jeane Baker can put food before the cats and try to approach them, but her care does not make them gentle or grant her control over what they do. The pregnant animal also links the cats’ ordinary life to the novel’s recurring concern with pregnancy and loss. That connection is not proof that the cats cause any human tragedy; it is part of the disturbing pattern through which Norma Jeane Baker later understands events.

The Cats in the Premiere Vision

At the premiere of Some Like It Hot, after a period of narcotic sleeplessness, frayed senses, and hospitalization, Norma Jeane Baker suddenly connects the cats to the loss of her unborn child. In the limousine, she recalls those she had fed at the Captain’s House and exclaims that they were responsible. The thought returns amid the public occasion and the attention surrounding her, but she speaks aloud without being heard.

The vision intensifies when she looks at the crowd. The faces before her become a row of cat muzzles, pointed ears, and carnivorous jaws. She sees the very animals she had fed as wanting the unborn child dead. This is presented as a revelation in her experience, not as a confirmed cause of the loss: the cats’ visits and the earlier rabbit attack are real within the narrative, while their supposed intention toward the child belongs to Norma Jeane Baker’s horrified interpretation.

Narrative Significance

The Stray cats recur across contrasting scenes: the patient, silent gathering for food; the pregnant cat’s attack on a rabbit; and the later vision in which a crowd becomes a predatory feline mass. The recurrence changes the meaning of the original feeding. A gesture of care that The Playwright had warned would draw an ever larger group becomes, in retrospect, entangled with helplessness, fear, and the inability to protect what is vulnerable.

The cats are not given individual identities or an independent account of their motives. Their behavior remains that of hungry, wary animals, while the novel’s most consequential claim about them arises from Norma Jeane Baker’s grief-stricken vision. That distinction matters: the animals do not become literal villains, but their remembered teeth and their hunger offer a form through which loss takes shape. At the premiere, a crowd of admirers turns into the cats she once fed, and public adoration becomes inseparable from private terror.