Beloved Companion
Sizi
early–mid 20th century
The cat a Nobel laureate would not disturb, even to work
- Owner
- Albert Schweitzer
- Years
- early–mid 20th century
- Known for
- Beloved Companion
Sizi was the cat of Albert Schweitzer — the celebrated Alsatian physician, theologian, organist and philosopher who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1952 for his humanitarian work and his ethic of "reverence for life". At the hospital he founded in Lambaréné, in what is now Gabon, Schweitzer surrounded himself with animals, and among them Sizi the cat held a special place in his affections.
The most cherished story about Sizi captures Schweitzer's whole philosophy in a single small kindness. Schweitzer, who was left-handed, would often find Sizi curled up asleep on his left arm as he sat at his desk. Rather than wake or disturb the sleeping cat, he would take up his pen in his right hand and write his prescriptions and correspondence awkwardly with it, waiting patiently until she chose to move.
That gentle image — a Nobel laureate rearranging his own work around a dozing cat — became one of the best-loved anecdotes about Schweitzer, quietly illustrating the reverence for even the smallest life that ran through everything he did. Sizi is remembered less for anything she did than for the tenderness she inspired in one of the twentieth century's great humanitarians.