I’ve always liked the song Our House by Crosby Stills Nash and Young, who are one of my favorite bands. (I saw them all together a few years ago - they were truly amazing, and Neil Young’s voice in particular sounds exactly the same as it did decades ago.) It’s a really distinctive song, because all of the rest of the songs on that album (Deja Vu) are very American Folky-sounding, but Our House sounds very, very British. It sounds like something the Beatles could have done, and this is no doubt because it was written by Graham Nash, the British component of CSNY. It’s a very baroque-sounding song, heavy on the piano and harpsichord, and sounds quite unlike all the other songs on the album.
This song contains the line: “Our house is a very very very fine house…with two cats in the yard.” I always found this line to be strange, from the very first time I heard the song, which was when I was five years old or so. Who keeps cats in their yard? Cats are generally a pet you keep inside your home. Even if someone has “outdoor cats” who spend time outside and come in and out through a cat door, they’re unlikely to describe the two cats in the yard as a feature of their house, the way it is so in the song.
It seems like it would make more sense for the line to say “two dogs in the yard.”
I was discussing this with a friend once and he suggested that they said “two cats in the yard” simply because the word “cats” fits better in the lyrics, rhythmically, and that to sing “with two dogs in the yard” would break up the flow of the words and sound clunky.
I tend to agree, but that could be because I’m so used to the word “cats” in that line that I can’t even conceive of it being anything else, and so it sounds odd to use another word there.
Well, I think it’s more common for people to have multiple cats than multiple dogs.
Less factually, to me, “two cats” sounds much cozier and homier than “two dogs.” No one needs to be afraid of a couple of cats hanging out in a yard, whereas two dogs might be watchdogs and thus not as friendly to strangers.
(Admittedly, I’m a cat person. Love dogs too, just not as much as cats.)
I know things are different now, and may even have historically been different in urban and suburban areas; but when I was growing up in a rural area we did not have animals in the house, nor did they come and go through a cat door. The cats lived outside, in the yard. So I’ve never had a problem with that particular lyric. I wondered more about "with two cats in the yard, life used to be so hard…" Life was hard with the cats? I’m sure the surrounding lyrics provide more context, but I could never remember them (and it would take away the mystery if I looked it up, of course ).
Isn’t that song supposed to be autobiographical? Maybe it’s “cats” because he really did have two cats, and “yard” because he needed something that rhymes with “hard”.
Nothing specific, but the book *Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon and the Journey of a Generation * has much to say about the domestic life of Mitchell and Graham Nash, who wrote the song about their cohabitation.
No reference to cats, but cats would fit right in. Dogs would be too boisterous for the tone of this song.
It refers to Nash as being very decorous, humble, fragile and gallant.
That article doesn’t cite Graham Nash as the writer, but two other people. The song in question does include the ‘two cats in the yard’ line, so it must be the same, or maybe a cover with some changes?
If the Crosby, Stills and Nash version is a cover, that would explain the Britisms. I’ve only heard the Madness version. It’s so well-known here that I’m surprised I’m the first Britdoper to link to this song.
There’s nothing in the song that says the cats are a permanent feature of the house any more than ‘sister sighing in her sleep’ is - presumably she wakes up sometimes.
They are, indeed, two different songs. Thematically, they seem to be traveling in opposite directions. Madness talks about a time when things were happier. CSNY talk about a time when life was harder.
Err…CSN &Y ( in this case ) pre-date Madness by a number of years. As noted Graham Nash was British and wrote the song about an affair he had with Joni Mitchell.
By the way by far the best stuff on that album belonged to Neil Young. IMO.
I just remember it being used for some commercial, showing a suburban family and (I think) their new minivan. Trouble is, the family had a dog, so the singers hummed the “cats” lines.
Aaargh, no, my apologies - I did look it up but the first one was wrong, and then Wiki confirmed my wrongness. I remember the Crosby Stills and Nash one now too. :smack:
For the song this thread was actually about, it sounds like he’s talking about a perfect day. The kind of day when it’s so sunny that cats leave the house to bask lazily, luxuriously and contentedly in the sunshine, much like the songwriter and his GF were basking before the fire.
).
