Gus: The Theatre Cat
"Gus: The Theatre Cat" is a poem by T. S. Eliot included in Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. Known as "The Theatre Cat" due to his career as an actor, Gus is an old and frail, yet revered, cat, who "suffers from palsy, which makes his paws shake." His coat is described as "shabby" and he is "no longer a terror to mice or to rats."
Gus, whose full name is Asparagus, is also a character in Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical adaption of the book, Cats. In the musical, the poem is used almost verbatim in the song "Gus: The Theatre Cat".
Cultural references[edit]
The description in the original poem about Gus playing a "Tiger... which an Indian Colonel pursued down a drain" is a reference to the short story "The Adventure of the Empty House" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In the story Colonel Sebastian Moran, chief underling of the infamous Professor Moriarty, is said to have pursued a man-eating tiger down a drain during his military service in India, before his criminal career.
Both the original poem and the number in the play refer to Gus's ability of pantomime, specifically in his serving as an understudy in a production of Dick Whittington and His Cat.
In the film Logan's Run, Logan and Jessica meet an old man in the Senate Chamber during their search for Sanctuary. The old man has many cats and references "The Naming of Cats", explaining that each cat has three names: one common, one unique, and one that only the cat knows. He refers to one cat in particular: Gus, short for Asparagus.