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