The Sophisticated Cat

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