RogerBW's Blog

Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, T. S. Eliot 08 July 2025

1939 poetry, descriptions of various cats-about-town.

Of course there is not a great deal one can say that hasn't been said before; although I had never actually read this until this year, I'd met some of the poems elsewhere and heard most of the names.

I think what particularly struck me reading the whole thing, though, it how much of it is drawn from the life: yes, for example, I have known a cat who conspicuously Wasn't There whenever anything got broken. There's an appreciation of the essential cat here, mixed of course with mild exasperation.

For a man who proudly asserted that poetry ought to be "difficult", Eliot's doing a very good job of writing the real thing, which is much harder than churning out verse that nobody can understand without editorial footnotes.

(For the curious, "Jellicle Cats" originates as a deliberate corruption of "Dear Little Cats", as "Pollicle Dogs" was of "Poor Little Dogs".)

Later editions append "Cat Morgan Introduces Himself", which is not terrible but is very much in a different style from the other poems, not least that it's narrated in first person by the cat in question — which breaks the dual vision that's present in the other poems, where they can be seen both as the behaviour of a cat in the real world and as the fantasy that one might like to invent about what the cat's up to.

But the rest is splendid, and great fun to read aloud. I am gladder than ever that I have never seen any of the musicals or the films.

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