Throughout the 885 Greatest Songs Of The 2st Century countdown, we’ll take you on deeper dives into select songs that pop up each day.
When we’re going through a rough patch, our pets can tell. This is an eternal truth that punk singer-songwriter John K. Sansom illustrates with playful profundity in “Plea From A Cat Named Virtute” by his Winnipeg indie rock band The Weakerthans, from their 2002 album Reconstruction Site.
Once called “the greatest song ever written from the perspective of a cat” by WXPN’s Jim McGuinn, “Virtute” races to careening fuzz guitar riffs on the chorus and crunchy palm-muted chords that chug on the verse. The music is upbeat and easy enough to love, but it’s the words that propel this song into greatness. Sansom’s lyrics have always skewed towards the literary — he’s occasionally taught creative writing at the University of British Columbia, and has a solo single about finishing his master’s thesis — and here he takes a unique angle on a rock and roll trope. Rather than give us yet another song told by yet another down-on-his-luck dude who just had his heart broken (ie. so much emo songwriting from the late 90s and early 00s), Sansom flips the script and presents the story from the character’s closest companion: Virtute the cat.
Named after the Latin word for “strength,” Virtute watches her human descend into an alcoholic funk where he does little else than sit around the house writing and singing sad music, drinking beer, and watching TV. “Why don’t you ever want to play?” she asks on the song’s opening. “I’m tired of this piece of string. You sleep as much as I do now and you don’t eat much of anything.” Virtute takes on the role of nurturing best friend, telling her human “those bitter songs you sing / they’re not helping anything,” encouraging him to cheer up by throwing a party for humans and animals alike (“I’ll cater with all the birds I can kill”), and ultimately dispensing some tough love: “I swear I’m going to bite you hard and taste your tinny blood / If you don’t stop the self-defeating lies you’ve been repeating since the day you brought me home / I know you’re strong.”
The very image of a cat telling her human to get his shit together is enough to make one want to be a better person; it elevates this song from potentially jokey novelty to something genuinely moving. On The Weakerthans’ final album, 2007’s Reunion Tour, Sansom continues the saga with “Virtute The Cat Explains Her Departure,” a goodbye letter as she runs away — do not listen or read its lyrics unless you are prepared to openly cry — and the characters reunite and reconcile on Sansom’s 2016 solo album Winter Wheat and its song “Virtute At Rest.”
Over the years, Virtute (despite being a fictional character) has become a source of inspiration among Weakerthans fans and beyond. Do a Google search and you’ll find she’s the subject of gig posters, fan art, and flash tattoos. (Sansom even named his online craft store Vivat Virtute.) But more than that, she’s a symbol of hope against adversity, of keeping hold of our strength even when it seems distant at best, and a reminder that things can change for the better, and the first step is listening to this “Plea.”