by Kevin Burton
(Catsongs is a series on Page 7 to honor the memory of my late sister Pat by looking at our two shared passions, cats and music.)
For this series, I am featuring songs with cats in the title, or perhaps the lyrics. Unfortunately “Cat’s in the Cradle” is the obvious choice to be the first song featured.
It’s a song performed by the late great Harry Chapin (written by his wife Sandy) about deep regrets after not making time for family. The song tells the story a father and son. My regrets are about my sister Pat, who died one year ago yesterday, two days shy of her 58th birthday. So the dynamic is a little different, but the point is impossible to miss.
“This heartbreaking song tells of a father and son who can’t schedule time to be with each other, and it serves as a warning against putting one’s career before family,” is how SongFacts describes Cat’s In The Cradle.
I would make two amendments to that. I would say the song is a warning against putting anything before family. More importantly, Songfacts said “can’t” schedule time. I would change that to “failed to.” The father and son were each in charge of much of his own time, even considering work obligations, but chose other things over family time.
The song is kind of a downer but it was nevertheless number one on the charts for Christmas week of 1974.
“The verses start out with a natural harmony and depict the tale of a father with his newborn son. Although dad gets the necessities of child rearing accomplished, he doesn’t allow himself to put in quality time with his son because of his career.”
“Initially, this seems like no big deal because of his hectic and oblivious life working and paying bills,” SongFacts wrote.
“A recurring end to the verses has the son saying, ‘I’m gonna be like you Dad, you know I’m gonna be like you…’”
“Over time, both father and son grow into a switching of life roles. The father realizes his son’s ambitions of college, grades, and driving, and wants to spend more time with him, yet slowly grasps the reality that now his son has no time for such things.”
“In the last verse, Chapin illustrates that the son is all grown up with a fast-paced job and kids of his own. In a glaring twist of roles, we see that the son now has no time to spend with his father. With a heavy heart, dad realizes that his boy has become just like him.”
The inspiration for the song went beyond artistic imagination, wrote Aaron Tyler in a 2023 piece for On Stage Magazine. Chapin’s father Jim Chapin was a noted jazz drummer whose drive for success cut into his family time.
“Harry often found himself at odds with his father’s relentless pursuit of success in the music industry. Jim’s demanding schedule and an unyielding dedication to his craft left Harry feeling neglected,” Tyler wrote. “The absence of his father would leave an indelible mark on his own journey as a musician and a man.”
Nevertheless Harry himself was away from family for long stretches, pursuing his own music career.
“This is a song my wife wrote to zap me because I wasn’t home when our son Josh was born,” is the way Chapin would introduce Cat’s In The Cradle at concerts, according to SongFacts.
“Sandy Chapin runs the Harry Chapin Foundation, which does what it can to continue supporting the causes Harry championed when he was alive,” SongFacts wrote. “While Sandy does a lot of work for the foundation, her focus is her family and her role as an on-call grandmother for six grandchildren.
As could be expected of the woman who wrote “Cat’s In The Cradle,” she values the time she can spend with them while they are still young.
“I don’t have a handle on just how many articles will be in this series. If you know cats, most of them are aloof. They come around when they feel like it. I will let these Catsongs articles do the same,” I wrote in talking about the intended series.
That was on Jan. 28!
I didn’t think the first article would be nearly seven months off! Though it’s not my intention, the next one might take another seven months, who knows?
I also wrote Jan. 28 that, “I can see already that these posts will be difficult, but necessary for me to write.”
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