Cat Stories: Everyman's Library Pocket Classics

Great little book, some great stories.

Excellent product, price and service

Lovely book, v good condition , got 1 for myself and 1 for a friend

I am sure I would love this book if I had it. The package turned out only to contain the Cat Poems, not the Cat Stories. I can find no place on your website to report this. So I am trying this. I would like to receive the Cat Stories, for which you have billed me. Thank you.

Wonderful

I am decidedly a cat person. A collection of stories about our feline companions should have been right up my street. And if not for the number of stories with poor outcomes for the cat, I probably would have loved it. But the sheer number of cat deaths, often in gruesome or unjust ways, far outnumbered those which captured the quiet bond between a human and their cat. Or rather, a cat and their human.I think it's important to go into this book with the knowledge that this book isn't therefore ideal for animal lovers who find those kind of things difficult to read about; if you routinely avoid similar scenes in a popular David Attenborough documentary then you won't have the stomach for this. What's worse, the deaths genuinely have total apathy surrounding them, with the humans/owners not really caring about the loss of their pet for the most part. I can't relate and I'm sure someone picking up a collection of stories about cats is probably adoring of their pet and wouldn't appreciate this either! I was looking for a celebration of what cats bring to our lives, but that wasn't to be the case.The majority of the stories are very dated, the newest having been written in 2008 but the oldest dating back to 1928 I believe. Whilst I like that this means we have a real scope of cat-based literature across decades, some of which have actually been translated, it also means that the majority of the writing is a more archaic approach. This is purely personal preference, but that's not my cup of tea and I found it difficult to not think of some of the stories as deliberately purple in prose (Rudyard Kipling's story was almost nonsensical, in contrast, which I also didn't enjoy and had expected to love).The few stories which I did enjoy were fantastic and resonated with me and the lives of my own cats over the years. I liked that there was appreciation for the lesser-chosen Black Cat, that cats were shown to love their owners and not just be entirely ambivalent towards them (because cat owners will know that there are anomalous cats who love us dearly) and that there are unique personalities in certain cats if you are fortunate enough to find a special one. The first story in this book actually encompasses all three of those things superbly and perfectly conveys the magnitude of loss one might feel to lose a beloved cat.Not a bad collection, but not really what I think people who are likely to pick this up are really hoping to gain from it.

This book looks beautiful, and many of the stories are exquisitely written. However, in most of them the cat dies.Story 1: cat gets cancer and has to be put down.Story 2: cat disappears, presumed dead.And so it goes on ... a feral cat is put down. Tobermory is killed in a fight and his friend the stable cat is drowned by the Major. The black cat has to fight the devil every night and can't go on forever (oi! Neil Gaiman! Get an exorcist!). Grummitch sacrifices his spirit to save a child. Ming is nearly drowned (deliberately) and has to kill his enemy to survive. One story is just a list of Tom and Gerry scenarios in which of course Tom always comes off worse.So if you're a cat lover, or buying this for a cat lover, be warned!

I bought this book from a different retailer and I bought it thinking it would be something heart warming and relatable to read being a cat lady myself. However, the stories I've read so far, with the exception of the opening story, have either been sad or not well written. I think if I and other cat folk had written cat stories the book would turn out a lot different to this.