Did Salvador Dali really bring an ocelot to restaurants?
Yes. His name was Babou, he sailed on the SS France, and when a Manhattan restaurant objected, Dali explained he was an ordinary house cat painted over in an op art design. In this episode of Talking With Pets, Babou explains the painter behind the mustache: the most famous surrealist image in the world, which is smaller than a notebook, and the shy man who built a performance braver than himself.
History remembers the famous. Their pets remember the person. On Talking With Pets, a brown tabby cat named Prince MoRee runs a most unusual practice: he contacts the pets of history's greatest figures and lets them tell what they really saw. This episode is part of the Older Kids tier, for families ready to go a little deeper: same show, same honesty, told up a band and never grown-up. Tonight, a wild cat crossing a marble hotel floor.
This episode is fully scripted and has passed the Talking With Pets accuracy review. The recording is in production. The audio player and the full transcript will appear right here the day the episode goes live. Join the founding list below and we will write to you when it does.
From the episode
Chaco: I mean, why bring an ocelot?
Babou: Because an ocelot is genuinely not performing. Everything else in the room was performing. The people performing normalcy. Dali performing surrealism. I was simply there. An actual wild animal in a hotel dining room. That was the most surreal thing in any room he ever entered, because it was real.
[Chaco stops writing.]
What's true, what we filled in, what we imagined
Every episode of Talking With Pets is built in three honest layers. Here is how this one breaks down.
Documented in the historical record
Babou the ocelot traveled with Dali and is documented in photographs, including aboard the SS France. The Manhattan restaurant anecdote, an ordinary house cat painted over in an op art design, is documented. The Persistence of Memory (1931) measures 24.1 by 33 centimeters, was painted in about two hours by Dali's own account, and began, also by his own account, with a soft Camembert one afternoon while Gala was out. Breton's 1924 manifesto defined Surrealism, Breton later expelled Dali and coined the anagram Avida Dollars, and Dali's rebuttal, that the difference between him and the Surrealists is that he is a surrealist, is widely documented. The tank arrival at his retrospective, the mustache maintenance he wrote about, and his each-morning quote about the supreme pleasure of being Salvador Dali are documented.
Grounded inference from the record
Dali's documented facts and Dali's own mythology are genuinely difficult to separate, and the episode says so, keeping the paintings and movement history documented and flagging the private personality as inference. That the private Dali was quieter than the public one, a man who would watch a fly cross a surface for an hour, is grounded in accounts of his working method. Babou's theory, that an actual wild animal was the most surreal thing in any room because it was real, is the ocelot's inference.
Story, voice, and feeling
Babou's voice, the séance, and Chaco's three color-coded categories collapsing into one word are imagined. An ocelot cannot really be interviewed by a cat. The paintings, the expulsion, and the tiny canvas are real; the unimpressed wild cat reporting them from a marble hotel floor is the storytelling.
Sources and further reading
- Babou the ocelot: documented photographs, including aboard the SS France; the Manhattan restaurant âpainted-over house catâ anecdote. Contemporary accounts.
- The Persistence of Memory (1931): 24.1 by 33 centimeters, the two-hour painting time and the Camembert origin by Dali's own account. The Museum of Modern Art; The Secret Life of Salvador Dali (1942). moma.org
- Surrealism: Andre Breton's 1924 manifesto, Freud's influence, Breton's expulsion of Dali and the âAvida Dollarsâ anagram; Dali's documented rebuttal.
- The performance: the tank arrival at his retrospective, the documented mustache writings, and âEach morning when I awake, I experience again a supreme pleasure, that of being Salvador Dali.â Multiple documented interview sources.
All historical claims above were checked in the Talking With Pets accuracy review, most recently the full editorial pass of July 2026.
Did Salvador Dali really have a pet ocelot?
Yes. Babou the ocelot traveled with Dali in the 1960s and is documented in photographs, including aboard the ocean liner SS France. In one documented anecdote, when a Manhattan restaurant objected, Dali explained that Babou was an ordinary house cat he had painted over in an op art design. Source: documented photographs and contemporary accounts.
How big is The Persistence of Memory?
Surprisingly small: 24.1 by 33 centimeters, roughly the size of a piece of notebook paper. By Dali's own account he painted it in about two hours one afternoon in 1931, after watching a soft Camembert cheese. It hangs at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Source: MoMA; Dali's The Secret Life of Salvador Dali.
Was Dali kicked out of the Surrealists?
Yes. Andre Breton, who wrote the movement's 1924 manifesto, expelled Dali and mocked him with the anagram Avida Dollars. Dali's documented rebuttal: the difference between me and the Surrealists is that I am a surrealist. Source: documented movement history.
Was the real Dali like the public Dali?
The episode's honest answer is that both were true. The mustache, the tank arrival at his own retrospective, and the daily pleasure of being Salvador Dali are documented performance. Underneath was a man who would watch a fly cross a surface for an hour, seeing ordinary things until they became extraordinary. The performance and the shyness can both be true.
What is Talking With Pets, and is this episode good for kids?
Talking With Pets is an educational history podcast where a brown tabby cat named Prince MoRee contacts the pets of history's greatest figures, who tell the true story of the person they knew. The core episodes are for ages 6 to 10, and this one is part of the Older Kids tier for ages 9 to 12, for families ready to go a little deeper. Every episode is sourced and divided into what is documented, what was filled in, and what was imagined. It is a Talking With Pets production.
Talking With Pets · the true stories only the animals saw.
Chaco, Roxie, Moose, Prince MoRee, and Armando are getting the pilot ready. Join the founding list and we will write to you when the first episodes go live. Listen with someone you like.