The Great Cat Poems About Cats

This delightful anthology gives us a teeming litter of literary tributes to the ever-fascinating, ever-mystifying cat. The feline has inspired poetic adoration since the days of the pharaohs, and the poems collected here cover an astonishing range of periods, cultures, and styles. Poets across the continents and centuries have described the feline familyfrom kittens to old toms, pussycats to panthersdoing what they do best: sleeping, prowling, prancing, purring, sleeping some more, and gazing disdainfully at lesser beings like ourselves. Here are Yeats's Minnaloushe, Christopher Smart's Jeoffry, Lewis Carroll's Cheshire Cat, T. S. Eliot's Rum Tum Tugger, William Blake's tyger and Rilke's panther. Here are tributes from Sufi mystics, medieval Chinese poets, and haiku masters of imperial Japan, from Chaucer, Shelley, Borges, Neruda, Dickinson, and Shakespeare. Here are the cats of Mother Goose, and the one who wore the hat for Dr. Seuss. The Great Catwill delight cat lovers everywhere, celebrating as it does the beauty, the mystery, the gravity, the grace, and, of course, the unassailable superiority of the cat.

Emily Fragos is a poet who lives in New York City. Her first book of poems, Little Savage, won the David Craig Austin Prize from Columbia University. She edited the Everyman's Library Pocket Poet anthology The Great Cat: Poems About Cats.

From The seventy-five praises of Ra	p. 19
Chang Tuan's cats	p. 20
Cat	p. 21
From Jubilate Agno	p. 23
Hodge, the cat	p. 28
A lion in winter	p. 31
White cats	p. 35
From The Divan-i Kabir	p. 36
The spring is a cat	p. 36
The cat show	p. 37
White cat blues	p. 38
Without violence	p. 39
The singing cat	p. 40
At the grave of Elizabeth Bishop	p. 42
The tyger	p. 44
The cat's eye	p. 46
The cat	p. 46
'Ultra-pink peony'	p. 46
Black cat	p. 49
To a cat	p. 50
The cats will know	p. 51
The cat	p. 53
The rabbit as king of the ghosts	p. 55
The thing about cats	p. 57
Cat	p. 59
The panther	p. 61
The sphinx	p. 62
Cat scat	p. 67
The cats of Greece	p. 68
The cat of the house	p. 69
The vain cat	p. 70
Sisterhood	p. 71
From Cat	p. 73
'Cat, you tumble down the street'	p. 74
The cats of St. Nicholas	p. 75
Magic cats	p. 78
The cat and the moon	p. 83
Every cat had a story	p. 85
Poem	p. 86
The Cheshire cat	p. 87
This is my chair	p. 88
The cat and the wind	p. 89
Cat	p. 90
From The cat in the hat	p. 91
Cat jacks	p. 92
The cats of Kilkenny	p. 93
Nine fat cats in Little Italy	p. 94
Pangur Ban	p. 97
Morning	p. 99
Apartment cats	p. 100
From To a cat	p. 101
From The spinster's sweet-arts	p. 102
From Dame Wiggins of Lee and her seven wonderful cats	p. 104
From Two songs of a fool	p. 106
The flying petunias	p. 107
Who will feed my cat?	p. 108
Cat in an empty apartment	p. 109
From The cat and the cock	p. 111
The cats have come to tea	p. 112
The cat	p. 115
The lover, whose mistresse feared a mouse, declareth that he would become a cat if he might have his desire	p. 116
My cat and I	p. 118
Propriety	p. 119
Pussycat sits on a chair	p. 119
An appeal to cats in the business of love	p. 120
'Arise from sleep, old cat'	p. 121
'Why so scrawny, cat?'	p. 121
'Amorous cat, alas'	p. 121
The cats of Balthus	p. 122
Cats	p. 124
Alley cat love song	p. 125
A lost painting by Balthus	p. 126
Woman and cat	p. 127
The owl and the pussy-cat	p. 128
Curse of the cat woman	p. 130
Lullaby for the cat	p. 135
The happy cat	p. 136
Cat on the mat	p. 137
Cat's dream	p. 138
From Peter	p. 140
Cat	p. 141
Cats sleep fat	p. 142
Catsnest	p. 143
Cat & the weather	p. 144
Verses on a cat	p. 149
Five eyes	p. 151
The cat	p. 152
'Pussy-cat, pussy-cat'	p. 153
'There was a wee bit mousikie'	p. 153
The rat-catcher and cats	p. 154
By threes, by fours	p. 156
'Lat take a cat' (from The Maunciple's tale)	p. 157
Cat and mouse	p. 157
'My hermitage'	p. 158
The old cat and the young mouse	p. 159
Cat	p. 160
Forest	p. 160
The lazy pussy	p. 161
'She sights a bird'	p. 162
A cat	p. 163
Song of the lioness for her cub	p. 164
Catnip and dogwood	p. 167
The prayer of the cat	p. 168
The single creature	p. 169
A cat's conscience	p. 170
Mother Tabbyskins	p. 171
I married my dog	p. 175
'Confound the cats!'	p. 179
A fable of the widow and her cat	p. 180
The cat and the lute	p. 183
From Sad memories	p. 185
Justice	p. 186
To Mrs. Professor in defense of my cat's honor and not only	p. 187
From The churlyshe cat	p. 189
Epitaph	p. 190
From The kitten and falling leaves	p. 193
Chaplinesque	p. 195
The young cat and the chrysanthemums	p. 196
Beware of kittens	p. 197
Familiarity dangerous	p. 198
From Through the looking glass	p. 199
Dawn	p. 199
Pinkle purr	p. 200
The three little kittens	p. 201
From The kitten	p. 203
To a cat	p. 207
On a cat, ageing	p. 208
Hoppy	p. 209
A 14-year-old convalescent cat in the winter	p. 211
Montague Michael	p. 212
Cat	p. 213
December cats	p. 213
My old cat dances	p. 214
Esther's tomcat	p. 215
From Nine lives	p. 217
Putting down the cat	p. 221
On the death of a cat	p. 222
From Song for mourning a cat	p. 223
From Cold mountain poems	p. 224
An offering for the cat	p. 225
On the death of a cat, a friend of mine aged ten years and a half	p. 226
From Matthias	p. 228
Ode on the death of a favourite cat, drowned in a tub of goldfishes	p. 229
Last words to a dumb friend	p. 231
As you were saying	p. 234
From Chansons innocents	p. 235
The blue bowl	p. 236
The epitaph of Felis	p. 237
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The Great Cat Poems About Cats

Summary

Author Biography

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials