willfulness, self-interest, and mystery.
It's said that one is a dog person or a cat person. I've been both. I grew up with a wonderful cocker spaniel I adored and took "exploring" in the suburban woods across from where I lived. I don't recall seeing many cats. All I knew of these mysterious creatures was that they chased and ate mice in the weird, silent, black and white, very primitive "Farmer Grey" cartoons of my childhood, and that my aunt living in West Germany would write regular letters to me reporting on her cat's antics. It, and as a result she, were always in trouble with the neighbors for its skill at killing birds.
It wasn't until I moved to Manhattan that I acquired (through a roommate) my first cat. The roommate moved in, immediately brought home two kittens, and then fled Manhattan after a couple of months, leaving me with one kitten because her parents wouldn't let her take both back to Ann Arbor. I was suddenly a cat owner, soon acquiring a second, older cat (who lived to be twenty-three plus), and was soon faced with my own dead or dying birds—a roof adjoining my apartment allowed my cats limited roaming area.
Since then I've always owned cats. Or have they owned me?
The stories herein are culled from anthologies, magazines, and collections, most published from 1980–2009, a few (such as the Lewis Carroll excerpt and the John Crowley and Stephen King stories) in the late 70s. There are stories in which cats are the heroes and some in which they're the villains. There are domestic cats, tigers, lions, mythical part-cat beings, people transformed into cats, and cats transformed into people. There's science fiction, fantasy, mystery, horror, and even one mainstream cat story. And yes, a few cute cats.
This is not my first cat anthology. I edited Twists of the Tale in 1996—it consisted of mostly original horror stories, three of them reprinted in this book.
Through the Looking Glass (excerpt)
Lewis Carroll
One thing was certain, that the white kitten had had nothing to do with it—it was the black kitten's fault entirely. For the white kitten had been having its face washed by the old cat for the last quarter of an hour (and bearing it pretty well, considering); so you see that it couldn't have had any hand in the mischief.
The way Dinah washed her children's faces was this: first she held the poor thing down by its ear with one paw, and then with the other paw she rubbed its face all over, the wrong way, beginning at the nose; and just now, as I said, she was hard at work on the white kitten, which was lying quite still and trying to purr—no doubt feeling that it was all meant for its good.
But the black kitten had been finished with earlier in the afternoon, and so, while Alice was sitting curled up in a corner of the great armchair, half talking to herself and half asleep, the kitten had been having a grand game of romps with the ball of worsted Alice had been trying to wind up, and had been rolling it up and down till it had all come undone again; and there it was, spread over the hearth-rug, all knots and tangles, with the kitten running after its own tail in the middle.
"Oh, you wicked little thing!" cried Alice, catching up the kitten, and giving it a little kiss to make it understand that it was in disgrace. "Really, Dinah ought to have taught you better manners! You ought, Dinah, you know you ought!" she added, looking reproachfully at the old cat, and speaking in as cross a voice as she could manage—and then she scrambled back into the armchair, taking the kitten and the worsted with her, and began winding up the ball again. But she didn't get on very fast, as she was talking all the time, sometimes to the kitten, and sometimes to herself. Kitty sat very demurely on her knee, pretending to watch the progress of the winding, and now and then putting out one paw and gently touching the ball, as if it would be glad to help, if it might.
"Do you know what to-morrow is, Kitty?" Alice began. "You'd have guessed if you'd been up in the window with me—only Dinah was making you tidy, so you couldn't. I was watching the boys getting in sticks for the bonfire—and it wants plenty of sticks, Kitty! Only it got so cold, and
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