BOOKS: Cats’ Meow!

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1997:

Cats’ Meow!
An Anthology of Cat Tales
edited by Jeannette Cakouros
and Ruth K. Flowers
Maine Rhode Publishers
(RR #1, Box 635, Woolwich,
ME 04579), 1996.
160 pages, paperback, $13.50.

Besides a lot of stories,
essays, poems, and a few elegantly
simple line drawings, Cats’ Meow!
offers biographical sketches of the
many authors.
Everything is about cats,
except for the bios, which do not
separate aleurophiles from aleurophobes––but
how did the latter get in
here, anyway, with a handful of
creepy stories, and some about cats
with disgruntled owners?

Inevitable are some
poignantly sad pieces, reminders of
what small, fragile creatures cats are,
in a large unfriendly world, and how
often those who love and would protect
them are also among the weaker
and less secure.
Cat ladies, innocent children,
cat enthroners enthralled and
enthusiastic, and raconteurs of
apparently old family tales take their
mini-turns. This might be a book to
give to aspiring writers or elderly
family historians, to start them
chronicling cats they have known,
for evidently there are many editors
these days who realize that anything
about cats has a good chance of
becoming the cat’s meow.
––Phyllis Clifton