The Sophisticated Cat: A Gathering of Stories, Poems, and Miscellaneous Writings about Cats

by Joyce Carol Oates (Editor), Daniel Halpern (Editor)

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
The 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

Genres: Cats, Fiction, Short Stories, Anthologies, Poetry, Animals

400 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1992

About the author

Joyce Carol Oates is an American writer. Oates published her first book in 1963, and has since published 58 novels, a number of plays and novellas, and many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction. Her novels Black Water (1992), What I Lived For (1994), and Blonde (2000), and her short story collections The Wheel of Love (1970) and Lovely, Dark, Deep: Stories (2014) were each finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. She has won many awards for her writing, including the National Book Award, for her novel Them (1969), two O. Henry Awards, the National Humanities Medal, and the Jerusalem Prize (2019).
Oates taught at Princeton University from 1978 to 2014, and is the Roger S. Berlind '52 Professor Emerita in the Humanities with the Program in Creative Writing. From 2016 to 2020, she was a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where she taught short fiction in the spring semesters. She now teaches at Rutgers University, New Brunswick.
Oates was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2016.
Pseudonyms: Rosamond Smith and Lauren Kelly.

Reviews

[Mary Clark · Rating 5 out of 5]

The cat is the supreme creation of a benign and wonderful god, someone like Santa Claus in a GQ suit. Obviously, sophistication becomes the cat, and any person who reads about cats becomes sophisticated. This large collection of stories, fables and poems spanning ancient to modern times describes the innate ability of cats to transcend the sad attempt at cleverness practiced by humans.

The Sophisticated Cat is a sometimes farcical, sometimes wise, often poignant and passionate collection of writings by an impressive array of great authors from many countries and cultures. Humorous stories include “The Cat That Walked By Himself” by Rudyard Kipling, “The Story of Webster” by P. G. Wodehouse, and “Lillian” by Damon Runyon (the latter takes place in the vicinity of Eighth Avenue and 49th Street). Colette’s “Saha” and Joyce Carol Oates’ “The White Cat” deal with human cruelty toward cats and the frailty and folly behind this cruelty.

Alice Adams’ exceptional story, “The Islands,” begins with the question, “What does it mean to love an animal, a pet, in my case, a cat, in the fierce, entire and unambivalent way that some of us do?” The story of her life with the silver grey tailless cat “Pink” rings true in every phrase.

Soseki Natsume’s “I Am A Cat” is told from the cat’s point of view. It is beautiful, precise, and haunting. There are stories by Aesop, the Brothers Grimm, Emile Zola, Balzac, Mark Twain, Hemingway, Saki, Italo Calvino, and Ursula K. LeGuin. Chekhov’s “Who’s To Blame?” is one of the finest, Orwellian-style allegories ever written.

The poetry is presented in five sections, from the romantic to the whimsical. In Pablo Neruda’s poem, “Cat,” he describes the complete catness of cats; a cat intends or impersonates nothing else: “His is that peerless / integrity, / neither moonlight nor petal / repeats his contexture: / he is all things in all, / like the sun or a topaz.”

Paul Valery describes them as “indifferent to everything but Light itself.” W. B. Yeats’ well known poem about Minnaloushe the cat is included: “And lifts to the changing moon / His changing eyes,” and fine poems by Hart Crane, Robert Graves, and Marianne Moore. “My Cat Jeoffrey” by Christopher Smart is the most fun to read and William Wordsworth’s “The Kitten and Falling Leaves” is the loveliest.

I did wonder why May Sarton’s work was not included. She has written a beautiful book, “The Fur Person.” To a purrfectionist, sophisticated cat reader, this was a glaring omission. The Sophisticated Cat receives ten purrs, five meows, and only one tail flick.

[SusanwithaGoodBook · Rating 1 out of 5]

I bought this book at a book fair several years ago (before I forced myself to stop going to those things). It’s a nice clean hardcover book with a lovely dustcover, and cats are my thing, so it was a must have, don’t you know?

Fast forward several years to last month when I began to review and clean out my To Read Shelf. One of the things I did was check every book I have - is it also available in ebook? Audio? Can I get the ebook or audio at the library?

If a book isn’t available in ebook version and can’t be found at the library I always wonder why. Is it too old? Is the story too dated? Why is it unpopular?

In particular, why is a collection of cat themed short stories and poems not popular enough for ebook format?

Well, now that I have read this one I can answer that question easily.

People who love cats don’t want to read about them being abused. Period.

Yes, there were a few very nice stories in here (thank you, James Herriot) and some cute poems. (I particularly loved the one written in the shape of a cat. Nice, that.) BUT, a lot of the stories are terrible. We could definitely do without Poe’s take on a cat story. No. Nevermore.

So I finally read this, but I can't recommend it. If you're a cat lover stay away. Far, far away.

[Radical · Rating 5 out of 5]

An enjoyable collection of short stories and poems. It makes it clear that whatever you think about cats, the answer is: yes. Cats inspire, simultaneously in the same person, affection and revulsion and this collection perfectly captures artists’ attempts to embrace or, a much more painful endeavor, reconcile those two conflicting views.

[Beth Stephenson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well, duh, it's Joyce Carol Oates. Need I say more? Cats are fabulous creatures, and I am privileged to share my life, currently, with four of these mesmerizing creatures, who condescend to live with me, my husband, and a varying coterie of dogs. Each a unique individual. Each a charming presence in his or her own right. Lovely to read and savor each chapter in its own right.

[Clare O'Beara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Now very dated - by means of not including recent works. The type is tiny and cramped so it is hard to read. There are short excerpts, poems and a few short stories. But mostly poems. The items are broken up into blocks by type of content, there are five blocks of poetry. Tennyson, Twain, Colette, Herriot, Grimm, Kipling, Carroll, Chekov, Wodehouse etc.

[Rose Lilian]

Good if you hate cats.

[Casey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yes.