This short story collection is about cats with unusual and magical abilities. None of the stories is original to this collection, they are all republished, which is probably a good thing considering the appallingly bad intros with the same info repeated multiple times and unclear verbosity. The stories themselves are in much better shape. My favorites were:

"Kreativity for Kats" by Fritz Leiber is a humorous opening focused on the conflict between a cat who enjoys experiments with the power of water and his confused human caretakers.

"The Jaguar Hunter" by Lucius Shepard feels like a modern-day folktale, as the main character is driven back into his old hunting job and comes face-to-face with a myth.

"The Sin of Madame Phloi" by Lilian Jackson Braun writes a strong voice for her clever main character cat and gives us an emotion short story.

"The Color of Grass, the Color of Blood" by R.V. Branham gives us another opinionated feline, but a much less friendly one with a decidedly dark humor.

This book is one of the starting volumes for Round II of The Otherworldly Bookbook

I enjoyed the first Magicats! anthology from these editors, which contains some of my favorite cat-themed SF stories of all time. Will have to see if this collection has any to compare!

Later: A varied collection here. My favorite stories include:

Tanith Lee's "Bright Burning Tiger", which uses Blake's poem as theme and inspiration for a tale of a hunter and his relationship with his prey. The opening passage amused me - a scene of a character striking the "shot a tiger" pose with a snoozing ginger tabby - but the story goes into a darker place, and Lee's lyrical prose is captivating.

I was torn about Braun's "The Sin of Madame Phloi" - while the titular cat does succeed in achieving vengeance at the end, there are some very unpleasant bits in the middle of the story.

R. V. Branham's "The Color of Grass, the Color of Blood" is among the new-to-me stories, and is a rather black-comedy look at life from the viewpoint of a domestic cat.

Somewhat jollier is John Collier's "A Word to the Wise" - this one I'd read before (I love Collier!), and I was pleased to find it here. The human who wants to get his cat to talk should have read Saki's "Tobermory" first!

[I also recommend the magical cats - er, Blessed Felines - from the webcomic Stand Still, Stay Silent!]

I left this book, bagged against the elements, on a lightpost in the Turnpike Plaza parking lot near Staples at around 3; hope the finder enjoys it!

*** Released as part of the 2015 Keep Them Moving release challenge. ***