The cat-loving poet in the Southern Song Dynasty was Lu You.
Lu You is a famous poet in the Southern Song Dynasty. He is famous for his love of cats. The reason he kept a cat was originally to catch mice and protect his collection of books at home. He likes reading very much. It can be said that he is addicted to books as much as his life, and he takes great care of books. However, there were many rats in his house, and they often gnawed at his books. He even wrote a poem called "The Book of Rat Failure", in which he mentioned that there were always traces of rats gnawing on his books, which made him very distressed. .
However, as time went by, his original intention of raising cats gradually changed into his love and companionship for cats. Lu You once raised many cats and wrote more than ten poems about them. These poems fully expressed his love and concern for cats.
Lu You's main influence:
1. Poetry achievements: Lu You has many literary talents, especially his poetry achievements. He said that he had "thousands of poems in sixty years". There are more than 9,300 poems in existence.
2. Historical achievements: Lu You also has historical talent. Lu You's historical achievements are mainly not in "Records of the Two Dynasties" (Southern Song Dynasty) and "History of the Three Dynasties" (Southern Song Dynasty) that he compiled when he was a historian. It lies in his privately written "Book of the Southern Tang Dynasty". During the Southern Song Dynasty, there were 11 historical books describing the history of the Southern Tang Dynasty, including the "Old History of the Five Dynasties" compiled by the History Museum led by Xue Juzheng, and the "New History of the Five Dynasties" privately written by Ouyang Xiu. Compiled into eighteen volumes of "Book of the Southern Tang Dynasty".
3. The art of calligraphy: In Lu You’s life, in addition to poetry, calligraphy was the sustenance of his ideals and his eternal pursuit. Judging from his poems about calligraphy and the surviving calligraphy handwriting and inscriptions on inscriptions, Lu You is good at three-body calligraphy: regular, running and cursive calligraphy, and is especially good at cursive calligraphy.