The Paris Review

Henri the Existential Cat waxes philosophical on the price of literary fame.

Nine weeks ago, a frigid, low-pressure system deposited some six inches of snow on central Belgium. On a Tuesday evening my girlfriend returned from work to her parents’ house outside Brussels and attempted the construction of a snowman in the garden. The process was unsuccessful; it was very cold and the snow was dry powder, with none of the cohesive properties required for the manufacture of what the Flemish call a sneeuwman. Abandoning the original project, my girlfriend sat down on the submerged lawn. As her body reached this thrillingly accessible position her dog attempted to mount her, over and over again. He would not desist. Exasperated, my girlfriend made a decision she had long toyed with. She condemned his balls. Read More »

“We’re definitely lending this book to the crew of kitten toughs who like to hang around the Myrtle JMZ stop talking about praxis and reminiscing about the days back when New York meant something, man.” (Good) book reviews, by two cats.

In addition to bringing the world the glory that is the Weird Book Room (plus, of course, the main site itself), AbeBooks curates a gallery of bookstore cats from all over North America. (We imagine international felines are welcome; the current batch just happens to hail from the U. S. and Canada. Certainly the resident orange cat at Paris’s Tea and Tattered Pages is a notable omission!) While a number of the kitties on display have literary names, Booker Fox, of the Book Nook in Mexico, Missouri, seems to be the only one with her own Facebook page, on which she gives literary recommendations. (The Street of the Fishing Cat was a recent pick.)

He has many friends, lay men and clerical, 
Old Foss is the name of his cat; 
His body is perfectly spherical,
He weareth a runcible hat.

Two thousand twelve marks Edward Lear’s bicentenary year. The author is known for many things: his nonsense verse, his nature art, his letters. If you’ve spent any time with the letters—and if you have, you know they’re utterly delightful—you are familiar with Lear’s faithful feline companion, Foss. A regular presence, both in word and sketch, Foss, who was adopted by the Lear family as a tabby kitten in 1873, was one of the constants in the author’s life.

As we know from Lear’s numerous illustrations, Foss had only half a tail: legend has it, a servant chopped it off, in the superstitious belief that this would keep him from straying.Read More »