Muriel Spark on getting a cat to aid in concentration

Cigarette, nibbled pencil, stacked books: the signifiers of authorship used to be so much easier….

I finished reading A Far Cry from Kensington, by Muriel Spark. At a point in the middle of the book, Mrs. Hawkins is invited to a fancy dinner party, and finds herself seated next to "a red-face retired Brigadier General" (rather a stock character, which Sparks is totally aware of):

...I said something to the effect that he must have had an interesting life.

"I could write a book," he said.

"Why don't you?"

"Can't concentrate."

"For concentration," I said, "you need a cat. Do you happen to have a cat?"

"Cat? No. No cats. Two dogs. Quite enough."

(I have trouble explaining why I found that sequence of one and two-word sentences so funny, but I read it over and over out loud).

She then explains to him, at some length, how a cat aids in concentration, and at the end of it he says "Good. Right. I'll go out and get a cat."

Then she give us this coda:

(I must tell you here that three years later the Brigadier sent me a copy of his war memoirs, published by Mackintosh & Tooley [the publisher where Mrs. Hawkins works, though not for long, since her bête noire, the pisseur de copie, met in the previous post, will soon put in an appearance]. On the jacket cover was a picture of himself at his desk with a large alley-cat sitting inscrutably beside the lamp. He had inscribed it "To Mrs Hawkins, without whose friendly advice these memoirs would never have been written—and thanks for introducing me to Grumpy." The book itself was exceedingly dull. But I had advised him only that a cat helps concentration, not that the cat writes the book for you.)

An absolutely fantastic book, with a light surface and some darker undertones (typical of Spark), well structured, does not outwear its welcome.