The Sophisticated Cat
Subtitle: a gathering of stories, poems, and miscellaneous writings about cats
By: chosen by Joyce Carol Oates and Daniel Halpern.
Contributors: Oates, Joyce Carol, 1938-; Halpern, Daniel, 1945-
Edition: First Printing  (1)
Publisher: Dutton; Dutton Adult
Published: 1992-11
Place of publication: New York, N.Y., U.S.A
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 396
Copyright date: 1992
Subjects: Cats -- Literary collections.
Description: In this amazingly diverse new anthology, the eternal cat is captured in the prose and poetry of the world's finest writers from Aesop to Zola. Here are stories by European masters of the form - Balzac, Chekhov, Wodehouse, Saki, and Colette - along with such American masters as Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, Damon Runyon, and Ernest Hemingway. The best in contemporary writing is well represented, too, by Joyce Carol Oates, James Herriot, Alice Adams, Angela Carter, and Ursula K. Le Guin, to name just a few. And the poets - from Keats and Emily Dickinson to Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens, Elizabeth Bishop and, of course, Old Possum himself, T. S. Eliot. Finally, a wonderful group of pieces called "The Truth About Cats" collects the wisdom of the ages ranging from Herodotus to Benjamin Franklin to William Faulkner, with many a delightful digression along the way.

Utterly irresistible, The Sophisticated Cat is rich, eclectic, and universal in its appeal, the perfect anthology to dip into or to read from cover to cover for all of us who feel the affinity, unbroken for thousands of years, between the soul of that magnificent creature, the cat, and our own. And the perfect gift for cosmopolitan cat-lovers of every literary stripe.
Notes: "A William Abrahams book."
Table of contents: title: Preface / Joyce Carol Oates; title: The Cat: A Preface / Daniel Halpern; title: 1. Cat Stories by the Masters; title: Who Was to Blame? / Anton Chekhov; title: The Story of Webster / P.G. Wodehouse; title: The Cat's Paradise / Emile Zola; title: The Afflictions of an English Cat / Honore de Balzac; title: Tobermory / Saki; title: The Black Cat / Edgar Allan Poe; title: 2. Cat Poetry from the Canon; title: My Cat Jeoffry / Christopher Smart; title: Ode: On the Death of a Favorite Cat ... / Thomas Gray; title: To a Cat / John Keats; title: Verses on a Cat / Percy Bysshe Shelley; title: She Sights a Bird / Emily Dickinson; title: To a Cat / Algernon Charles Swinburne; title: A Fable of the Widow and Her Cat / Jonathan Swift; title: On the Death of a Cat ... / Christina Rossetti; title: To Winky / Amy Lowell; title: The Kitten and Falling Leaves / William Wordsworth; title: The Spinster's Sweet-Arts / Alfred, Lord Tennyson; title: [The Churlyshe Cat] / John Skelton; title: 3. More Stories About Cats from the Masters; title: Cat in the Rain / Ernest Hemingway; title: Dick Baker's Cat / Mark Twain; title: Lillian / Damon Runyon; title: from La Chatte: Saha / Colette; title: The White and Black Dynasties / Theophile Gautier; title: 4. Cat Poetry from the Twentieth Century; title: The Cat and the Moon / W.B. Yeats; title: Last Words to a Dumb Friend / Thomas Hardy; title: Chaplinesque / Hart Crane; title: A Rabbit as King of the Ghosts / Wallace Stevens; title: Frightened Men / Robert Graves; title: The Naming of Cats / T.S. Eliot; title: The China Cat / Walter de la Mare; title: Peter / Marianne Moore; title: Sad Memories / Charles Calverly; title: Lullaby for the Cat / Elizabeth Bishop; title: The Cats / Weldon Kees; title: The Happy Cat / Randall Jarrell; title: Poem / William Carlos Williams; title: 5. More Stories About Cats. Mrs. Bond's Cats / James Herriot; title: Death of a Favorite / J.F. Powers; title: The Best Bed / Sylvia Townsend Warner; title: from I Am a Cat / Soseki Natsume; title: 6. Cat Poetry in Translation; title: Black Cat / Rainer Maria Rilke; title: Cat ; The cat ; Cats / Charles Baudelaire; title: Woman and Cat / Paul Verlaine; title: White Cats / Paul Valery; title: [Beware of Kittens] ; Young Tomcats' Society for Poetic Music / Heinrich Heine; title: The Cats of Saint Nicholas / George Seferis; title: Cat / Pablo Neruda; title: 7. Contemporary Storytellers on Cats; title: The White Cat / Joyce Carol Oates; title: The Islands / Alice Adams; title: Puss in Boots / Angela Carter; title: Schrodinger's Cat / Ursula K. Le Guin; title: Amateur Voodoo / Francine Prose; title: 8. Contemporary Poets on Cats; title: Cleanliness / Stephen Dunn; title: Hoppy / Reginald Gibbons; title: Sisterhood / Daniel Halpern; title: Divination by a Cat / Anthony Hecht; title: Wild Gratitude / Edward Hirsch; title: Kitty and Bug / John Hollander; title: Esther's Tomcat / Ted Hughes; title: The Cat / Galway Kinnell; title: The Thing About Cats / John L'Heureux; title: The Cat / William Matthews; title: My cat and i / Roger McGough; title: Catnip and Dogwood / Howard Moss; title: Poem for Pekoe / Robert Phillips; title: The Cats of Balthus / Bin Ramke; title: Without Violence / Pattiann Rogers; title: Cat & the Weather / May Swenson; title: Touch of Spring / John Updike. Pleasure, Pleasure / Theodore Weiss; title: 9. Whimsical Cat Tales; title: The Tale of the Cats / Italo Calvino; title: Cat and Mouse in Partnership / The Brothers Grimm; title: Four Fables / Aesop; title: The Cat That Walked by Himself / Rudyard Kipling; title: [The Cheshire-Cat] / Lewis Carroll; title: Cat and King ; Cat and Youth ; John Mortonson's Funeral ; A Cargo of Cat / Ambrose Bierce; title: A Friendly Rat / W.H. Hudson; title: The Little Red Kitten / Lafcadio Hearn; title: 10. Whimsical Cat Poems; title: The Owl and the Pussy-cat / Edward Lear; title: Two Nursery Rhymes / Anonymous; title: The Old Cat and the Young Mouse / La Fontaine; title: The Vain Cat / Ambrose Bierce; title: The Mysterious Cat / Vachel Lindsay; title: from archy & mehitabel / Don Marquis; title: 11. The Truth About Cats; title: Dogs and Cats ; The Lives of Two Cats / Pierre Loti; title: On Cats / Guy de Maupassant; title: The Cat of Egypt / Herodotus; title: My Cat / Montaigne; title: Hodge / James Boswell; title: An Appreciation / Chateaubriand; title: Hinse of Hinsefeld / Walter Scott; title: A Letter of Condolence / Thomas Gray; title: In Memoriam / Robert Southey; title: The Cats of Balthus / Rainer Maria Rilke; title: from The Reivers: Cats / William Faulkner; title: A Humble Petition ... / Benjamin Franklin; title: The Roaming Cat / Adlai Stevenson; title: Dogs Vis-a-Vis Cats / Roy Blount, Jr