Reading Nick Holland’s “The Brontë Love of Pets”
October 4, 2026
Pets are like your children or friends, depending upon how you see them in your own surroundings. I am a sister to my two cats: Toro the Tabby and Camille the Black. Not a Cat Lady or Cat Mom—both burlesque images of a woman living alone with her cats. And I don’t see myself as either—or, for greater atmospheric enchantment, perhaps I am a witch who writes beneath a lustral moon at night. Enough of the self-defense. And Toro and Camille are my lucky stars in my otherwise not-so-lucky life. You got that?
So, reading Holland’s article about the Brontë sisters’ love of their pets at home was a simple pleasure of one Saturday afternoon. Before reading it, I already knew that Emily Brontë had a pet merlin named Nero, whom she fed in the kitchen when Charlotte wasn’t around, since Charlotte wasn’t fond of seeing him there. But I didn’t know they had cats at Haworth Parsonage until I saw their only brother Branwell’s adorable drawing of a cat loafing like bread, much like my Toro. In fact, the Brontës were very fine artists, as seen in their pictures of Nero, Flossy (Anne’s spaniel), and Grasper (Emily’s mastiff).
The dogs seem more like the sisters’ familiars than the cats do, given the sensibilities and personalities concealed beneath the narrative veneer of their novels. Still, Haworth Parsonage was filled with the pets’ amiability and the family’s moments of contentment. No wonder the sisters frowned upon and judged anyone who displayed indifference or irritation toward pets or other animals beyond the parsonage.
Back in my tiny apartment in LA, I am writing this note with Toro under my legs. He looks at me with large emerald eyes full of liquid tenderness and affection. He knows I am writing, and if he likes what I am writing through our special astral connection, he stays still as a gesture of approval. I know Edgar Allan Poe’s cat Catterina used to do something similar, but Toro is more like my Roman Praetorian Guard, standing watch over my writing. As for Camille, he is sleeping in his secret hideaway in my bedroom, but soon he will come out and look at me with his amber eyes, saying “Meow,” which means, “I am hungry.”
I don’t care if I am a real witch pretending to be a sister.
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