What did Mark Twain name his cats?
Sour Mash, Beelzebub, Famine, and Pestilence. The greatest American humorist sat in the grass in the afternoons with a cat named after a biblical plague and was perfectly at ease. In this episode of Our Next Collar, Sour Mash tells what she watched from Quarry Farm: Huckleberry Finn written up the hill while a typesetting machine that was almost working swallowed a fortune down below. Both things. Same summers. Same man.
History remembers the famous. Their pets remember the person. On Our Next Collar, a brown tabby cat named Prince MoRee reaches the pets of history. One of them tells what they really saw. Tonight, a cat who watched a man make the worst financial decision in American literary history and one of the most important American novels at the same time. True, surprising, and funnier than history has any right to be. Great for curious kids and the grown-ups listening with them.
This episode is fully scripted and has passed the Talking With Pets accuracy review. The recording is in production. The audio player and the full transcript will appear right here the day the episode goes live. Join the founding list below and we will write to you when it does.
From the episode
Sour Mash: That the worst financial decision in American literary history and one of the most important American novels were written in the same summers, by the same man, from the same farm. Neither one cancelled the other.
Sour Mash: He went broke. He chose to pay everyone back. He was sixty. He went around the world performing for strangers because it was the right thing to do and also because he was very good at it. And then he came home and kept writing.
Sour Mash: The machine is in a warehouse somewhere. The book is still being read.
[Chaco writes something at the top of his notes: “Both things. Always both things.”]
Sour Mash, Beelzebub, Famine, Pestilence, the octagonal study at Quarry Farm, Huckleberry Finn, and the typesetting machine that failed in 1894 are all real. Her voice is ours.
Sources and further reading
- Quarry Farm, Elmira, New York: Twain's summer writing home for about twenty years; the octagonal study; Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer, and A Connecticut Yankee written there. Center for Mark Twain Studies, Elmira College. marktwainstudies.com
- The Paige Compositor: James Paige's typesetting machine; about fourteen years of investment; the 1894 failure outside the demonstration room. The Mark Twain House and Museum; the investment figure of about $300,000 per Connie Ann Kirk, Mark Twain, A Biography (2004), with lower estimates in some sources. marktwainhouse.org
- Bankruptcy (1894, including the failure of Charles L. Webster & Co.), the decision to repay every creditor in full, and the 1895 to 1896 world lecture tour. The Mark Twain House and Museum. marktwainhouse.org
- “Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of Humor itself is not joy but sorrow.” Mark Twain, Following the Equator (1897).
- “Of all God's creatures there is only one that cannot be made slave of the lash. That one is the cat.” Mark Twain, notebooks and letters.
- Documented cat names: Sour Mash, Beelzebub, Famine, Pestilence. Twain biography and letters; the Mark Twain House and Museum. marktwainhouse.org
- “The Gilded Age,” coined in the 1873 novel Twain co-wrote with Charles Dudley Warner; the autobiography dictated from bed for posthumous publication. Mark Twain Project, University of California. marktwainproject.org
All historical claims above were checked in the Talking With Pets accuracy review, most recently the full editorial pass of July 2026.
What did Mark Twain name his cats?
Twain's documented cat names include Sour Mash, Beelzebub, Famine, and Pestilence. He loved cats and wrote that of all God's creatures, only the cat cannot be made slave of the lash. Source: Twain's letters and notebooks; the Mark Twain House and Museum.
Did Mark Twain really go bankrupt?
Yes. Twain invested about fourteen years and, by the most cited estimate, around three hundred thousand dollars in the Paige Compositor, a typesetting machine with eighteen thousand parts that worked beautifully in the demonstration room and broke at the newspaper office. His publishing company failed too. In 1894 he was bankrupt at nearly sixty. Source: the Mark Twain House and Museum; Kirk, Mark Twain, A Biography (2004). Estimates of the figure vary across biographers.
How did Mark Twain pay off his debts?
He refused the easy way out and chose to repay every creditor in full. At sixty he went on a speaking tour around the world, about fifteen months through Australia, India, and South Africa, and wrote Following the Equator about it. He came home and paid everyone. Source: the Mark Twain House and Museum.
Where did Mark Twain write Huckleberry Finn?
Largely at Quarry Farm in Elmira, New York, his wife's family's summer home, in a small octagonal study on the hill. He summered there about twenty years and wrote most of the work people know him by there, including Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer, and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Source: Center for Mark Twain Studies, Elmira College.
What is Our Next Collar, and is it good for kids?
Our Next Collar is an educational history podcast for curious kids ages 6 to 10 and the grown-ups listening with them. A brown tabby cat named Prince MoRee reaches the pets of history, and one of them tells the true story of the person they knew. Every episode lists its sources and says plainly which parts are real and which are ours, which makes it a quiet lesson in how to weigh sources. It is a podcast from Talking With Pets.
Our Next Collar · the true stories only the animals saw.
Chaco, Roxie, Moose, Prince MoRee, and Armando are getting the pilot ready. Join the founding list and we will write to you when the first episodes go live. Listen with someone you like.