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An anthology compiled by two poets, containing over fifty poems as well as stories and writers' recollections of cats, and numerous reproductions of art, some in color. Writings from the 17th century onward, including a lot of rarely-anthologized material from the 20th century.

Edited by George Macbeth and Martin Booth

Contents:

• from The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce
• "Elevenson" (poem) by Ambrose Bierce
• I. CAT'S YOUTH
  • "How the Cat Became" (story) by Ted Hughes
  • "The Kitten's Eclogue" (poem) by Ruth Pitter
  • "The Cat That Walked by Himself" (story) by Rudyard Kipling
  • "Midwife Cat" (poem) by Mark Van Doren
• II. CAT'S MEAT
  • "Milk for the Cat" (poem) by Harold Monro
  • "War Cat" (poem) by Dorothy L. Sayers
  • "Five Eyes" (poem) by Walter de la Mare
  • "The Story of Webster" (story) by P. G. Wodehouse
  • "On Lutestrings Catt-Eaten" (poem) by Thomas Master
  • "The Diminutive Lyon or Catus, the Cat" (from a 17th-century medical book) by William Salmon
• III. CAT'S GAMES
  • "Poem" (poem) by William Carlos Williams
  • "The White Cat" (story) by W. W. Jacobs
  • "Peter" (poem) by Marianne Moore
  • "The White and Black Dynasties" (memoir) by Théophile Gautier (translated by Lady Chance)
  • "Cat" (poem) by Alan Brownjohn
  • "Rhymes for the Nursery" (poem) [anonymous]
  • from "The Cat by the Fire" (memoir) by Leigh Hunt
  • "At the Zoo" (memoir)by Mark Twain
  • "The Family Cat" (poem) by Roy Fuller
  • "The Ballad of Tough Tom" (poem) by Paul Gallico
  • from "Jubilate Agno" (poem) by Christopher Smart
  • from "A Letter to His Daughter" (memoir) by Theodore Roosevelt
• IV. CAT'S LOVE
  • "Esther's Tomcat" (poem) by Ted Hughes
  • "Cat and Lady" (poem) by Paul Verlaine (translated by Arthur Symons)
  • "Nature Notes: Cats" (poem) by Louis MacNeice
  • "The Jealous One" (story) by Giles Gordon
  • "To My Lord Buckhurst, Very Young, Playing with a Cat" (poem) by Matthew Prior
  • "the song of mehitabel" (poem) by Don Marquis
  • "mehitabel s extensive past" (poem) by Don Marquis
  • "My cat and i" (poem)by Roger McGough
  • "What Did You Do There?" (story) by Harvey Jacobs
• V. CAT'S MAGIC
  • "Cat-Goddesses" (poem) by Robert Graves
  • "Broomsticks" (story) by Walter de la Mare
  • "The Cat and the Moon" (poem) by W. B. Yeats
  • "Diamond Cut Diamond" (poem) by Ewart Milne
  • "The Cat" (poem) by Giles Lytton Strachey
  • "The Cat Horoscope" (mock-horoscope) by Ann Currah
  • from "The Hsien-i" (story) by Liu Yuan-ch'ing (trans. Martin Booth)
  • from A Voyage to Lisbon (memoir) by Henry Fielding
  • "Cats" (poem) by Charles Baudelaire (trans. Roy Fuller)
  • "The Seventh Knight and the Green Cat: A Variation on the Gawain Poet" (poem)by Alan Brownjohn
  • "Tobermory" (story) by Saki
  • "The Singing Cat" (poem) by Stevie Smith
  • "'When in Doubt—Wash'" (fiction: excerpts from Jennie) by Paul Gallico
  • "Macavity: The Mystery Cat" (poem) by T. S. Eliot
• VI. CAT'S KILLINGS
  • "Growltiger's Last Stand" (poem) by T. S. Eliot
  • "A Cat" (poem) by Edward Thomas
  • "Ming's Biggest Prey" (story) by Patricia Highsmith
  • "The Colubriad" (poem) by William Cowper
  • "Aunty and Her Cats" (memoir) by Paul Ableman
  • "The Rat-Catcher and Cats" (poem) by John Gay
  • "Cat and Fiddle" (story) by Roy Fuller
  • "The Black Cat" (story) by Edgar Allan Poe
• VII. CAT'S AGE
  • "The Kitten" (poem) by Ogden Nash
  • "Memoir of the Cats of Greta Hall" (memoir) by Robert Southey
  • "Sermons in Cats" (essay) by Aldous Huxley
  • "Fourteen Ways of Touching the Peter" (poem) by George MacBeth
  • "Cat" (poem) by Michael Hamburger
  • "Jeremy Bentham's Cat" (memoir) by Dr [John] Bowring
  • from Wild Wales (memoir) by George Borrow
  • "The Cat" (poem) by Robin Skelton
  • "To Mrs Reynolds' Cat" (poem) by John Keats
  • "On a Cat Ageing" (poem) by Alexander Gray
  • "Old Tom" (poem) by Richard Eberhart
• VIII. CAT'S DEATH
  • "My Old Cat" (poem) by Hal Summers
  • "On Clem: A Cat" (poem) by Geoffrey Holloway
  • "Dostoievsky" (poem) by Robert Leach
  • "Last Words to a Dumb Friend" (poem) by Thomas Hardy
  • "In Memory of My Cat, Domino: 1951-66" (poem) by Roy Fuller
  • "On the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes" (poem) by Thomas Gray
  • "Death of the Cat" (poem) by Ian Serraillier
  • "Mike" (memoir) by Sir Ernest A. Wallis Budge
  • "A Case of Murder" (poem) by Vernon Scannell
  • "The King of the Cats Is Dead" (poem) by Jeni Couzyn
  • "The King of the Cats Is Dead" (poem) by Peter Porter
  • from The Age of Reason (story) by Jean-Paul Sartre (trans. Eric Sutton)
• IX. CAT'S RESURRECTION
  • "Extract from the Will of Miss Topping"
  • "Car Fights Cat" (poem) by Alan Sillitoe
  • "Let No Man Put Asunder" (story) by Graham Fawcett
  • "To a Slow Drum" (poem) by George MacBeth
  • "Pets" (poem) by Ted Hughes
  • "Gunner" (poem) by Martin Booth
  • "The Cat as Cat" (poem)by Denise Levertov
  • "Epitaph on the Duchess of Maine's Cat" (poem) by La Mothe le Vayer (trans. Sir Edmund Gosse)