[CatHerd]

Wow, how did you learn of Hiddigeigei? I first knew of him from Säckingen. When I was a young girl, my family lived in Switzerland for awhile, and we sometimes took day trips to Säckingen and Waldshut on weekends. We had a black tomcat at the time (whom I loved very much) and so of course I loved the sculpture of Kater Hiddigeigei.

I bought a charming little book of von Scheffel’s Der Trompeter von Säckingen in a second-hand bookshop; it had white cover embossed in silver and black. It seemed antique to me at the time, but could not have been all that old. I was still learning German, and the little book helped me in that as well as being entertaining. It’s hard to believe von Scheffel was only in his late twenties when he wrote it, isn’t it?

Anyway, nice to meet a fellow fan of Hiddigeigei!

[Hiddigeigei]

"Wow, how did you learn of Hiddigeigei?"
I grew up in a semi rural area living in the maternal family home. I had few amusments, but the old house had a large library, mostly 19th Century. In my early teens I did a lot of reading. There was a copy of Scheffel's Der Trompeter von Säckingen translated by Mrs. Franz Brünnow (it is on gutenberg.org) and later read it in German. I enjoyed the poetry and felt a certain identity with the cat's detached and somewhat jaundiced-eye view of humanity.