Cats

Cats are recurring presences in the diary, appearing in stories of affection, loss, neglect, and everyday uncertainty. Rather than forming one continuous subplot, their brief appearances accumulate across years: a kitten’s sudden death, an old grief that still troubles Andy Warhol, a disturbing account of two cats killed during a breakup, and later episodes of mistaken replacement, rescue, and removal. In these compressed entries, cats become a practical test of how people respond to vulnerable animals—and a recurring reminder that small domestic events can endure in memory.

Death, memory, and guilt

On March 30, 1978, Warhol noted the death of Harriet, a kitten Jay Johnson had picked up and found dead. Jane Holzer had given Harriet to Jade Jagger as a Christmas present. The entry gives no explanation for the kitten’s death; its emphasis is on the suddenness of the discovery and on Jay’s distress. A small, abrupt loss is recorded without elaboration, but it stands at the center of the day’s report.

A much older loss surfaced years later during Jamie Wyeth’s exhibition. Warhol recalled giving a kitten to Bettie Barnes, then giving Barnes the kitten’s mother as well because the young animal seemed to want its mother. Barnes had the mother spayed, and she died during the procedure. Warhol remembered her as Hester and wrote that he had felt guilty ever since. He imagined that Hester would have survived had he arranged the procedure himself, while also blaming Barnes for allowing her to die. The memory turned an account of Jamie’s show into a recollection of an early-1960s loss: Warhol said that the experience was how they should have begun Popism, and that it was when he gave up caring. He then pulled away from the thought, saying he did not want to think about it. The diary does not resolve the guilt; it records its persistence and the way it interrupts the present.

Neglect, replacement, and responsibility

In August 1978, Ronnie arrived at work late, and Gigi came to the office demanding to know what had happened to her cats. Ronnie said that he had found one choking on a sponge and the other clawing at it. He then killed both cats and put their bodies in the incinerator. He also said that he had not fed himself or the cats for five days because he had no money, and that he was too proud to borrow any. Warhol judged that Ronnie had starved the animals to get back at Gigi, condemned the act, and said he could not look at him. He connected the episode to the couple’s marriage, writing that he had never thought they should have married. This is the diary’s most severe account of human responsibility toward Cats: the animals’ immediate danger is bound up with their owner’s deprivation and the conflict between the couple, but Warhol’s response centers on their innocence and on Ronnie’s choice.

In 1981, Brigid Berlin’s missing cat Billy prompted a different kind of impulsive response. Unable to find him before the pet store closed, Brigid bought another cat for $300. When she returned home, she heard a meow and found Billy in a pail in the closet; she took the new cat back. The episode turns on a mistaken absence and a rapid attempt at replacement, then reverses when the missing animal is found. Its comic shape does not erase the concern behind Brigid’s search, but the purchase and return make the incident one of the diary’s clearest domestic reversals.

Cats in the social circle

A limousine driver became briefly famous after being acquitted of kidnapping a bar owner’s cat. In the driver’s account, he had fed the cat, a lookalike for Morris the Cat, and let it out as usual; when it did not return to the bar, the owner accused him of trying to sell it as a replacement for Morris, who had recently died. The jury deliberated for three hours before finding him innocent. The driver showed Warhol a newspaper clipping about the case and took the verdict as a source of celebrity. A few days later, after a theater performance, Warhol and his companions discovered that the same driver was taking them. The repeated encounter turns a small local court case into a running anecdote about fame, accusation, and recognition.

Cats also appear in other people’s homes and changing relationships. At the Dakota, Yoko Ono told Warhol that the three cats in her apartment had not talked since John Lennon died until she put on a record. The diary presents this as her account, not as an independently explained change in the animals. In a separate episode, Brigid gave Freddy the cat to Rupert Smith. When Rupert’s house in Pennsylvania burned, Freddy hid in the stove and survived. The entry offers no further account of the fire or the cat’s later circumstances; its decisive detail is the hiding place that kept him safe.

Separation and return

Cats remained part of the emotional associations attached to people who had moved through Warhol’s circle. At a softball game in August 1985, Warhol ran into Gigi, who said that she and Ronnie had been back together for two weeks. He looked at the little dog she was walking and immediately remembered that Ronnie had killed her cats when the couple were breaking up. The reunion thus brought the earlier incident back into the present, even though the animal beside Gigi was a dog, not one of the cats. Warhol also noted that Ronnie had since broken up with Tama Janowitz, placing the renewed relationship within a wider pattern of changing partnerships without adding further details about the cats.

In 1984, Dr. Karen Burke suspected that Brigid’s scratching might be caused by the cats. After visiting Brigid at home, Warhol asked what she would do if the cats turned out to be responsible; Brigid said she would get rid of them. Warhol recorded this response as evidence, in his view, of her lack of feeling. The entry leaves the suspected cause unresolved and reports no action taken against the animals. Its significance lies instead in the possibility of their removal and in Warhol’s blunt contrast between a practical response and the attachment he expected.

In February 1986, Jean-Michel Basquiat told Warhol that he had found a dead person in his backyard and called the police; the body had still not been removed by six that evening. In the same entry, Warhol reported that Basquiat had sent a cat that failed to catch rats to Atlanta by plane, paying $100 for the trip to a gallery there. Warhol worried that the cat would not be cared for. The two details share the entry but are not presented as causally connected: one describes the police response to a death nearby, the other a cat’s relocation after it failed at a task assigned to it. Across these episodes, Cats are seldom given an account of their own; instead, the diary records where people place them, how they treat them, and what their fates reveal about the relationships around them.