Yesterday I was preparing to write something when I realised there probably wasn’t much sense in it, not what I was writing but the timing. I moved this blog to a different host and yesterday is when they were doing the work, somehow it didn’t make a great deal of sense to go and write something using the old details after they’d taken a backup prior to moving it over. Naturally I took the opportunity to down tools and completely forget what I was planning on writing about so today you get some words about Cats and Literature.

Cats make great companions, they’ve been worshipped by the ancient Egyptians and give great amusement value as you can see in the following video:

I spent a few minutes trawling my photos and my memory to find the following examples of cats in literature, that it only took 10 minutes to find all these examples shows there must be a lot more out there and I’d welcome your thoughts here.

Always top of my list is Carbonel by Barbara Sleigh. The magic of this book isn’t just in the magic but also in how they can talk with the cat. Carbonel is a Prince of cats but has been coerced into becoming a familiar. Set in England.

Gobbolino by Ursula Moray Williams is aimed at younger children. He is a familiar and well aware of how good or bad a familiar he is.

Let’s have a look at Rudyard Kipling and All the Mowgli Stories. Kipling set the Mowgli Stories in Pench, India a far cry from England and totally different to any other place I’d read about in my childhood. The cat? Shere Khan, a tiger who was the designated bad guy.

Born Free by Joy Adamson is the only real life cat story I could find. Adamson was in Africa and picked up Elsa and her siblings when very young, she and her husband raised them until they were big enough to be released back into the wild. They kept tabs on them and Elsa was the one who wanted more contact with them. There are three books in the series and they’re totally amazing.

While I can’t find any of the books on my shelf (we have too many books), Anne McCaffrey wrote a series of books about humanoid Catteni. Not being able to look at the book and check the details I only have my memory telling me they had catlike characteristics including strength and the ability to leap large distances.

There are plenty more instances such as 27 Cats Next Door by Anita Feagles, Animorphs by K. A. Applegate who sometimes morphed into cats, Catwings by Ursula K Le Guin, Chanurs Venture by C. J. Cherryh and Catweazle by Richard Carpenter…hang on, the only relationship here is his name so you’d better not look at him in this instance.

I’ll leave you with a photo of the cat in Corner Lamp Books, Moorabbin.