The Role of Cats in Aura

A recurring element in Carlos Fuentes's novel Aura, is the cat. When Felipe first moves in and is exploring his new room he hears cries and discovers, after opening a window in his skylight, "five, six, seven cats--you can't count them, can't hold yourself up there for than a second--are all twined together, all writhing in flames and giving off a dense smoke that reeks of burnt fur." Later on in the novel Felipe discovers how, when Consuelo was a young girl, her husband found her torturing a cat. The meaning of the theme of harming cats is somewhat hard to decipher, but an argument can be made that it adds to the oddity of Consuelo's character.