This book is the perfect gift for cosmopolitan cat-lovers of every literary stripe. A superb collection of classic stories and poems about cats, composed by a grand total of 99 of history's finest writers. Stories by masters of the form - Balzac, Chekov, Wodehouse, Zola, Saki, Colette, Poe, Twain, Runyon and Hemingway - as well as the best in contemporary writing represented by the likes of Joyce Carol Oates, Alice Adams, Angela Carter and Ursula K. LeGuin, to name just a few. Then there are the poets, from Keats and Emily Dickinson to Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens and, of course, Old Possum himself, T.S. Eliot, creator of such immortal felines as the Rum-Tum-Tugger and that inimitably elusive mystery cat, Macavity. Finally, a group of pieces called The Truth About Cats collects the wisdom of the ages ranging from Herodotus to Benjamin Franklin to William Faulkner, with many a digression along the way.