The Year of the Cat

Ok so same format as before - choose a book that matches the selected theme (or if pressed for time a poem or short story) come along and tell everyone what it was and what you thought of it. There is no set text and the list is suggestions only.

Ok, normally we do countries and regions but we didn't choose a country. We remembered Ellie wanted to read a book which had the title "The Cats of [insert placename here]" but couldn't really remember the place so we just went with.....cats. For non-whimsical people, don't worry - we're not going to make next month "Find a book about Guinea Pigs" or anything, it was just a one off.

Here are some cat-related reads:

## 1. Mikhail Bulgakov — The Master and Margarita (Russia)

• Behemoth is not just comic relief but a carnivalesque symbol of anarchic truth, theatrical evil, and the exposure of Soviet hypocrisy. The cat embodies the novel’s moral inversion: buffoon, demon, and philosopher rolled into one.

By the way everyone I know who hated this book has read the Penguin version. People who like it seem to prefer the Vintage translation by Michael Glenny.

## 2. Natsume Sōseki — I Am a Cat (Japan)

• A foundational modern novel: the cat’s ironic detachment becomes a symbol of intellectual alienation during Japan’s rapid modernization. The feline gaze is less “cute observer” than a lens of philosophical estrangement.

## 3. Haruki Murakami — Kafka on the Shore (Japan)

• Cats function as conduits between worlds: speech, violence, disappearance. They are symbolic thresholds—between consciousness and instinct, life and death, self and myth—rather than mascots or plot devices.

## 4. T. S. Eliot — Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats (UK)

• Though formally playful, Eliot’s cats are archetypal social roles: the trickster, the dandy, the criminal, the mystic. Beneath the lightness is a modernist taxonomy of personality and performance.

***

5. George Orwell - Homage to CATalonia.
Ok - I promise - no more puns.

## 6. E. T. A. Hoffmann — The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr (Germany)

• One of the great proto-modernist novels. The cat is both narrator and symbolic double of bourgeois complacency, artistic narcissism, and Enlightenment self-regard—set against the fragmented tragedy of Romantic genius.

## 7. Takashi Hiraide — The Guest Cat (Japan)

• A minimalist, high-literary novella where the cat symbolizes contingency, grace, and the limits of possession. The animal’s quiet autonomy refracts the emotional lives of the humans around it without sentimentality.

## 8. Colette — The Cat (La Chatte) (France)

• The cat here is pure symbol: erotic rival, emotional mirror, embodiment of pre-human attachment. Colette uses the animal to anatomize marriage, jealousy, and cruelty with surgical precision.

## 9. Doris Lessing — Particularly Cats (UK)

• Essayistic but cohesive and deeply literary. Cats become symbols of independence, evolutionary persistence, and the uneasy ethics of human dominion. Lessing’s cats are never metaphors alone—they resist us, which is the point.

## 10. Italo Calvino — The Baron in the Trees (Italy)

• Not cat-centered in plot, but cats recur symbolically as emblems of liminality, autonomy, and nonconformity—mirroring the baron’s arboreal existence. Calvino’s feline presences echo his broader meditation on freedom and distance from society.

## 11. José Saramago — The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis (Portugal)

• A subtler inclusion: cats appear as quiet symbolic figures of watchfulness and survival amid political decay. Like much of Saramago, they register the persistence of life beyond ideology, reason, or historical catastrophe.

We are also planning an "Action Research" session in January which will consist of a tour of local hostelries looking for that elusive pub which has bookable tables for 10, no sports screens and less noise and is handy for public transport. Date TBA. Any suggestions welcome.

Equally if you have any good Cat related book recommendations, no matter how tangential, put it in the comments. I'm torn between reading Master and Margarita for the third time or Calvino.