In a more enchanting, less antiseptic age when the backstage regions of our playhouses were not quite so functional but much more romantic, almost every theatre had its cat. There is tradition in the theatre cat. She not only controlled the mouse population, but she was also looked upon as good luck. Actors and managers and stagehands, and the old back-door keeper, liked to see her around the place. In a world of fancy and uncertainty, there was comfort in the character of the theatre cat.

When the stage was empty, she walked its boards with majesty and assurance. On bright afternoons she lay complacently in an amber flood of sunlight by the open door of the scene dock, serene in her right to obstruct passage and to slumber cozily while heavy boots moved dangerously near her head as the sets for one production were carted away, and the trappings for another brought in.

At night the playhouse cat usually sat by the stage door, sometimes on the doorman's desk, receiving as her just due the greetings and affectionate caresses of the players as they arrived. She never doubted that her saucer of milk would be placed for her; she knew that mice would be lurking somewhere for her to chase - in the parquet beneath the plush seats . . . below the stage in the boiler room . . . or high aloft in the fly-gallery where the maze of hemp lines crisscrossed, and heavy sandbags swayed ever so gently as they hung suspended from the old wooden grid. This was the theatre cat's realm; she belonged, she was accepted, she served. And like others who have had truck with the stage, some of its cats achieved a certain notoriety. One of the last of the celebrated theatre cats of New York was Minnie of the Winter Garden.

The Winter Garden, even in the early 40s, was a wonderful playhouse for a cat. A theatre of history and glamor, one was not able to forget while backstage that the entire area behind the curtain-line had once been a horse barn. The horses in their time had been worn by the old Broadway trolleys. I shan't go so far as to say that the actual aroma of the theatre's former tenants was noticeable, for a good deal of soap and water had been spread around since the last gray mare had departed; but to the sensitive nose of a cat, always bewitched by the atmosphere of the stable, the premises must have been satisfactorily if faintly permeated.

Minnie liked the Winter Garden and almost everyone liked Minnie. She was an ordinary black and white tabby, well-mannered - not like her sister of unhappy memory. Minnie's sister, who shall here be nameless in her shame, had found her way one night to an unlocked dressing-room filled with gorgeously bespangled wardrobe. Quite losing her head, Minnie's sister set to with claw and tooth, and in a single orgy destroyed several hundred dollars' worth of costumes. By way of punishment she was banished from the theatre forever. Minnie remained. If she was offended because dressing-room locks were more carefully inspected thereafter, she didn't show it. Minnie was too regal, too utterly self-contained to take notice of the sordid affair.

Minnie was no ham. She would stalk the stage when its scenery was struck against the back wall or leaning in the wings, but once the house curtain was lowered and the audience commenced to enter the theatre, Minnie retired to her favorite position near the stage door and seldom paid much attention to performances.

After mice, Minnie's diet consisted mainly of fresh milk brought to her daily by the stage carpenter who also supplied occasional treats of liver and chopped meat. Like most cats, Minnie developed whimsical appetites for an odd assortment of tidbits. She liked to lick chocolate off candy-bar wrappers that fell near her plate, she was not revolted by a sip of Coca-Cola now and then - and she came to have an overwhelming passion for fresh dough.

Whatever construction is put upon the word, dough in any form is not common backstage. The fresh dough Minnie came to know and love was mixed nightly by the property man for the use of Bobby Clark, comedian, in one of his routines for the musical comedy "Mexican Hayride."

For Mr. Clark's followers, part of his insouciant charm is his bewitching practice of appearing in a new and more startling costume and makeup in each succeeding scene. To aid and abet their star's tomfoolery, Herbert and Dorothy Fields arranged in "Hayride" for Mr. Clark to play the part of one Humphery Fish, and American king of the numbers racket who flees to Mexico to escape the long arm of United States law. Naturally, to confuse his pursuers, Mr. Clark disguised himself the moment he crossed the Rio Grande, and he continued throughout the course of the show to lope from one disguise to another. At the click of a castanet he became first a bull-fighter, then the leader of an incredible mariachi troupe, and, or all things, a repulsive Indian squaw with buck teeth, greasy black braids, painted on spectacles (Mr. Clark's own comic trademark), and a cigar smoking papoose strapped to his back. To further confound his enemies, Mr. Clark's squaw was engaged in the ancient and honorable Mexican occupation of manufacturing and vending tortillas.

To make tortillas one needs a certain amount of fresh dough. If one is a comedian of Mr. Clark's caliber, once needs a considerable amount of fresh dough of a consistency particularly rubbery and magnificently adherent. Such dough can not only be beaten into incredible tortillas, but can also bee looped around any number of actors who happen to cross the stage. It is splendid for draping the figure of one's nemesis in the plot.

That is why fresh dough was to be found backstage at the Winter Garden during the run of "Mexican Hayride." Since, in the course of performance a good deal of the dough was flung in arcs so Herculean that some of it fell into the wings, Minnie could not very well ignore the gooey, fascinating substance. Sniffing was followed by tasting. Minnie discovered she liked the stuff. In a very short time she became the property man's most devoted admirer, waiting for him to arrive, following him patiently to the locker room below the stage while he hung up his hat and coat. As he prepared his props for the show, Minnie trotted faithfully at his heels, feasting her opalescent eyes upon her god with shameless, unmistakable ardor.

It was, however, when the prop man went to his room to mix fresh dough that Minnie really disgraced herself. Dignity was cast aside, reticence forgotten. Minnie purred and meowed. She leaned with fitful shudders first against the property man's right leg and then against his left leg. She switched her tail about like a banner. Her pink tongue was visible at one corner of her usually prim mouth. She drooled. And the property man, being only human and much in love with Minnie, saw that she got a few dabs of dough each night. Never much - never enough, Minnie seemed to feel - but just a little to please her, and yet not a sufficient amount to injure her delicate innards. Perhaps it would have been well if Minnie had been made ill just once on fresh dough. She might have come to care less for it. She might not have taken to sitting dangerously close to the on-stage edge of the wings each time Mr. Clark went on to play his scene as the old tortilla maker.

His audience laughed hysterically at Mr. Clark's improvisations in this scene. His timing was faultless, his ad libs riotous, his taste for the sublimely ridiculous never more superb. Cast and crew paid the artist the supreme tribute of gathering in the wings each night to watch Mr. Clark in the tortilla scene.

Minnie watched too. She may have laughed, but she had deeper interests in the nuances of the scene. With eager eyes she noticed that as Mr. Clark manipulated great ropes of dough, twirling them about his head like a lasso, lobbing the gluey mass this way and that, that sometimes bits of dough broke loose and fell to the stage. Dough on the floor was dough in Minnie's province - but, alas, by the time the show was over and she could go sniffing about the stage, her friend the property man had swept up every last particle of the wonderful delicacy. Minnie pondered this for quite a spell. When she had reflected a sufficient number of performances, she acted. Cat-like, she did the logical thing. Seeing dough fall to the floor and wishing very much to gobble it up before it disappeared, Minnie decided that the one way to make certain of getting her rightful share was to place herself in a position to snap up the bits and pieces as they fell from Mr. Clark's hands.

So it came about that Minnie made her theatrical debut one evening in "Mexican Hayride." Just after the lights went up on the tortilla scene, Mr. Clark in his outrageous squaw attire came on stage with his portable tortilla factory. This was a high cart backed with a platform on which Mr. Clark stood to manufacture tortillas. It also provided an eminence from which he could circulate streamers of dough in all directions.

No sooner was the comedian planted center stage with the spotlight full upon him, than Minnie strolled on from the wings and sat down directly in front of Mr. Clark's cart, her back to the audience, her eyes fixed expectantly on the dough dispensing "squaw." A roar of laughter went up from the house. Mr. Clark puffed furiously on his cigar. Behind his painted spectacles, his eyes looked perplexed. A master of timing, he knew he had done nothing to bring such a howl. Knowing that audiences are sometimes given to incredible reactions, the comedian gave them the benefit of the doubt. He bared his false buck teeth, gave his artificial black braids a careless toss, and commenced kneading the lumps of dough oh his cart with a violence that can only be described as peculiarly his own. In this mood, Mr. Clark could battle Kallikaks to a frazzled finish.

Minnie licked her chops. The audience tittered. Minnie became conscious of her public. Perhaps she became self-conscious. In any event, she looked at the customers for the first time - and somehow, as cats can, she managed to look silly and girlish and slightly apologetic. No one in that house doubted from that moment forward that Minnie was a part of the show. I think Minnie caught on, too. She played her part to the hilt.

Unable to see Minnie over the top of his high tortilla cart, Mr. Clark became more and more amazed at audience reaction. Carefully, brilliantly, he built stage-business toward enormous laughs. Minnie took the laughs a beat after they should have gone to Mr. Clark. When he tossed a yard of dough to the right, it was funny to behold - but watching Minnie trot optimistically beneath the flying dough was funnier. The sight of Mr. Clark hanging epaulets of dough on an unsuspecting policeman, and scooping off the decorations quickly with a great wooden spoon was calculated to amuse. It did. But watching Minnie's patent disappointment as the dough medallions vanished was much, much more amusing. Mr. Clark perplexity promptly grew to annoyance. He climbed off his cart, his features grim with suspicion, and started downstage. As Mr. Clark walked to the right of his cart and below it, Minnie vanished upstage at the left side of the cart.

Laughter at this point had reached that pitch not far removed from real tears. Mr. Clark looked helplessly into the orchestra pit and shrugged his shoulders. When he saw the usually solemn musicians dabbing at their eyes, I had the feeling that he could have been coaxed into a good cry himself. Valiantly, the comedian returned to his cart. As he disappeared behind it, Minnie reappeared. She was licking her chops happily. This also pleased the audience. They commenced to applaud.

For some reason, perhaps simply because she had managed to filch a bit of dough, Minnie grew weary of the whole affair. I think she disapproved of the vulgar applause. She eyed the audience coldly and and stalked off into the clutching hands of a frantic stage manager. The balance of Mr. Clark's hilarious tortilla scene laid an egg that night. I don't know if he ever found out why. Most of us felt honor-bound not to snitch on Minnie. We were pleased and relieved when her debut was ignored by the press.

However, certain changes in Minnie's life occurred the very next night. She was locked in the boiler room for every subsequent performance of "Mexican Hayride" and to the best of my knowledge she never tasted fresh dough again.

copyright 1949 by Robert Downing

originally published in Theatre Arts, September 1949