I found this fair-condition softcover at the Used Book Superstore, and was glad to find another release copy.

This is a very handsome collection of poems, quotes, excerpts, and illustrations of cats, some of them well-known and others more obscure. (I was tickled to find a Charles Addams cartoon and another by Edward Gorey nestled among the 17th-century Flemish paintings and Victorian poets.) As with all such collections, it seems, some of the entries are on the harsh side - the history of cats is not without its tragic moments - but most of them are wonderful. One of my favorite items here is Randall Jarrell's poem "The Happy Cat," which begins "The cat's asleep; I whisper kitten/till he stirs a little and begins to purr - /he doesn't wake. Today out on the limb/(the limb he thinks he can't climb down from)..." It ends with a potentially sobering question, and yet illustrates cats (and the people who contemplate them) very well...

I'm adding this book to the Cat Stories bookbox, which I'll be handing off to BCer eponine38 over lunch tomorrow. Hope someone enjoys the book!

Taken from Mary Zee's Cat Stories Bookbox. Thank you for sharing it!

A very pleasing collection of poems, story excerpts, and artwork about cats. Cats of all persuasions - from loved pets to fear-inducing “pact with the Devil” felines; from objects of worship to castle-dwelling furballs - are covered in prose and poetry. Loved browsing just a few pages at a time, over the course of – holy moly! – 7.5 years. I’m sorry to have kept it soooo long.

The poems were my favorite part of the book. A couple excerpts:

“The cat by magic comes
Through slits of doors or air
To shadow through the rooms
And stalk what is not there. “ From “The Cat” (original title, eh?) by Ann Stanford

“Draw close, old yellow cat,
For I am all alone – and cold –
And the owl’s weird cry
Keeps coming across the hill all night.” From “Companionship at Night” by Agnes Steward Beck, 1939

And this one, from “Indoor Jungle Blues” by Ulrich Troubetzkoy, 1970
“Alert and cunning without need to be,
he flicks his tail, crouched on the ottoman,
ears crisped to sounds that shake tranquillity –
the pouring milk, the shearing of a can.

He prowls the tropic warmth from door to door
and stares through his transparent walls of glass
at sudden gusts of birds that dart and soar
and scatter onto fountain and the grass.”


Thank you for sharing this, Gory, and once again I apologize for the long stall in its travels.

Hope it finds a new reader!

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