On Cats Author Charles Bukowski By Charles Bukowski
Charles Bukowski À 7 Free read
The tailless, cross-eyed cat came to the door one day, and
we let him in. Old pink eyes. Quite a guy. Animals are inspirational.
They don't know how to lie. They are natural forces. TV can make
me ill in five minutes, but I can look at an animal for hours and
find nothing but grace and glory, life as it should be.
---
I wanted to name our cats
Ezra, Celine, Turgenev,
Ernie, Fyodor and
Gertrude
but
being a good guy
I let my wife
name them
and it came out:
Ting, Ding, Beeker,
Bhau, Feather and
beauty.
nary a Tolstoy
in the whole bloody
batch.
---
We now have 9 cats. The strays arrive and we can't
turn them away. We've got to stop. Damned cats get
me up early in the morning to let them out. If I don't,
they start ripping up the furniture. But they are won-
derful and beautiful animals. Cool. I know where the
expression 'cool cat' comes from now.
178211727X “In my next life I want to be a cat. To sleep 20 hours a day and wait to be fed. To sit around licking my ass.” I’d never read anything by Bukowski, so I wasn’t sure quite what to expect from this book, which is mostly composed of previously unpublished poems and short prose pieces about the author’s multiple cats. The tone is an odd mixture of gruff and sentimental. Make no mistake: his cats were all Real cats, in line with the Pratchett model. A white Manx cat, for instance, had been shot, run over, and had his tail cut off. Another was named Butch Van Gogh Artaud Bukowski. You wouldn’t mess with a cat with a macho name like that, would you? My favorite passage is from “War Surplus,” about an exchange he and his wife had with a store clerk:
“what will the cats do if there is an explosion?”
“lady, cats are different than we are, they are of a lower order.”
“I think cats are better than we are,” I said.
the clerk looked at me. “we don’t have gas masks for cats.”
(See also my blog post on Five Books about Cats.) 178211727X Για σκυλομάνα που δεν τρέφει ανάλογα αισθηματα για τις γάτες ε δεν τα πήγαμε και άσ��ημα με το θειο τσαρλς 178211727X
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So I went into this book not liking Charles Bukowski, and I went out of this book still not liking Charles Bukowski. I feel like Charles Bukowski is a misogynist and a misanthrope, and a lot of the people who like him tend to be angry white men. Despite all that, when I saw that there was a collection of his cat related works, I was like, Well, maybe he has a soft side to him. How can I fault someone who loves cats? And at first I was sort of into it. It opens with a story about how he's trying to get his cat to do a trick and the cat is like haha no. Which I TOTALLY RELATE TO. My cat is always pulling shenanigans like that, like she enjoys painting me for a fool.
But after this endearing cat trick story, the book delves into what Bukowski is more well known for-- writing about how he hates everyone and gross poems about bodily functions and also how he hates everyone. The unique twist in this collection is that now he actually sort of likes something: cats! And I'm going to be honest, some of these poems were okay and I loved the pictures of all his cats. It was a more endearing look at an author I hate. I just still don't really like him lol. If you don't either, don't expect this to change your mind.
2 to 2.5 stars
Charles Bukowski (1920 -- 1994) was once an underground, cult figure but his reputation has grown since his death. His poetry, novels, and stories continue to be read and a steady stream of his writings has been published posthumously. On Cats is part of a trilogy of recent Bukowski books, together with On Writing and On Love edited by Abel Debritto, a Fulbright scholar and the author of the study Charles Bukowski: King of the Underground. It is a good addition to the large body of Bukowski's writing.
The book consists of poems and short prose works about cats. Many of the works have been published before in other forms, but the specific texts in this book are each published for the first time. Debritto gives a useful list of sources at the end of the volume. For example, one of the best works in this collection is a poem called The Mockingbird which is about a mockingbird which receives an unhappy comeuppance after taunting a cat. This is one of Bukowski's best-known poems and appears in a collection titled Mockingbird Wish Me Luck. The version in On Cats is basically identical to the published version, but it includes two words that were deleted when the poem reached its final form. Some of the works in this book, however, are published for the first time. The book also includes photographs of many of the cats Bukowski and his wife owned and loved over the years who are the subjects of some of the poems in this collection.
Readers familiar with Bukowski will not be surprised at his love for cats. In this book, cats are not sentimentalized and portrayed as furry, sweet little creatures. Many of the works, such as The Mockingbird show the hard, cruel side of cats as they pursue and kill birds. The book sometimes emphasizes cats as loners and as coming off the streets, characteristics of Bukowski himself. The book suggests that cats are comfortable with themselves, feel no guilt, and know how to relax by sleeping as much as twenty hours in a day. In the book's concluding poem, Bukowski states: I study these/creatures./they are my/teachers.
On of the prose entries in the book is an excerpt from a 1960 letter Bukowski wrote to Sheri Martinelli. Bukowski says [t]he cat is the beautiful devil. He continues his discussion of the cat;
There are no spirits or gods in a cat, don't look for them, Shed. A cat is the picture of the eternal machinery, like the sea. You don't pet the sea because it's pretty but you pet a cat -- why?-- ONLY BECAUSE HE''LL LET YOU. And a cat never knows fear--finally -- he only winds up into the spring of the sea and the rock, and even in a death-fight he does not think of anything except the majesty of darkness.
With this posthumous book Bukowski joins poets including T.S. Elliott who have written a volume devoted to cats. This book will interest the growing group of Bukowski readers. It will also interest lovers of cats who are willing to hear a unique, tough-minded voice about their favorite animal.
Robin Friedman 178211727X
'A cat is only ITSELF, representative of the strong forces of life that won't let go'. For Charles Bukowski, there was something majestic and elemental about cats. He considered them to be sentient beings, whose searing gaze could penetrate deep into our being. Cats see into us; they are on to something.
An illuminating portrait of one very special writer and a lifelong relationship with the animals he considered his most profound teachers, On Cats brings together Bukowski's reflections on the ruthless, resilient, indigent and endearing creatures he so admired. On Cats Author Charles Bukowski
Bukowksi has a reputation for writing, often amusingly, about his experiences with booze and women. But if you know his writing, you also know he loves and writes about cats. This collection is obviously made for cat lovers, some poems, some sections of his Chinaski novels.
The opening piece about Bukowski/Chinaski trying to impress a visitor about all the tricks his cat can do made me laugh aloud, since you already know the cat will not perform on command. “Shake my hand! Shake my HAND! Roll over!” Apparently shouting will make the cat more responsive? (I have cats and know the answer).
Buk’s kind of sentimental when it comes to cats: “. . . warm light alone tonight in this house, alone with 6 cats who tell me without effort all that there is to know.”
“TV can make me ill in five minutes, but I can look at an animal for hours and find nothing but grace and glory, life as it should be.”
“In my next life I want to be a cat. To sleep 20 hours a day and wait to be fed. To sit around licking my ass. Humans are too miserable and angry and single-minded.”
I listened to it on audiotape while sometimes watching my cats.
178211727X A book of Bukowski's short pieces and poetry all about his love of cats? Admittedly I was sold before I cracked a page. Bukowski's love and admiration for his feline friends shines through every page and it's easy to see why. His rough-and-tumble group of strays share so many of the writers traits it's no wonder they gravitated toward one another. It was wonderful reading from this softer side of a man who is widely remembered as a gruff, alcohol loving womanizer. I thought I couldn't love the man anymore then I already do and then suddenly he's a sweet, feline lovin' softie! I hope in the end Bukowski got his wish and moved on from his human life and into his next as a cat.
*Thank you Ecco and Edelweiss for this review copy 178211727X My long time Goodreads friends know that I love baseball, have a celebrity crush on a quarterback, and that my favorite authors are Isabel Allende and Doris Kearns Goodwin. What they might not know is that in addition to four kids, we have nine cats. I never had a pet as a kid for a myriad of reasons, but my husband had many animals wander in and out of his house. Our youngest daughter who is now nearly ten was born a cat lover and had been begging for a cat for years. My husband did not want to do it. He was concerned how the kids would react when the cats got old and perished, how I who wears my emotions on my sleeves would react. One day my daughter’s pleas got to him, and he caved and we adopted our first cat, but we thought that she would need a friend to keep her company when we were all out of the house. Cat number two joined our family, followed by seven more in the course of the last few years. Suffice it to say, our family has banned ourselves from stepping foot in Pet-Valu hence another feline begs to join our home. We went from having no pets at all to being that “crazy cat family,” and we would not have it any other way.
Summer vacation ends when we get up tomorrow morning. I wanted a light book to finish up my August reading because I knew that come morning it is back to school (kids) and work (me) and the daily grind that comes with it. Earlier this week I saw the book On Cats on my Goodreads feed. A short collection of poetry by the late great Charles Bukowski, this is the ornery writer’s ode to his cats. I had never read any of his work before, but the book description noted that the author owned nine cats, so I felt a solidarity to him in a way that only an owner of multiple pets can. Luckily my library system came through and I picked up this slim volume to read on a lazy Sunday afternoon. As expected, although bitter at times, this book is all about Bukowski’s love affair with his cats. For me, it was love at first page.
Bukowski notes that the cat is the devil. He feels love every time that he looks into the yellow eyes of his special feline friends, a love he does not always receive from encounters from humans. Although Bukowski comes across as a grumpy old man who would rather be reading and writing, he showered all of his cats with love and affection, noting that cats are superior to humans. His anecdote about Manx is especially touching and shows cats’ resilience and that maybe cats really do have nine lives. Bukowski might come across as repetitive here because others edited this collection after his passing. His most poignant words: that he would like to come back to earth as a cat. All they do is sleep twenty hours a day and shower their owners with love.
Tomorrow it is back to school and work for the first time in half a year. I am sure that it there will be an adjustment period for all of the cats, but thankfully they have each other to keep them company. I know that I will miss them as much as they miss me, and I will be sure to shower them with love and treats and tuna when I walk in the door. Charles Bukowski’s words ended my summer on a positive note and could not have done a better job in describing the uniqueness of the human-cat dynamic.
3.5 stars 😻 💕🐈 178211727X
my cat shit in my archives
he climbed into my Golden State Sunkist
orange box
and he shit on my poems
my original poems
saved for the university archives.
that one-eared fat black critic
he signed me off.
On Cats is a collection of musings, poetry, essays, photographs and excerpts from novels, all relating to Bukowski's love for (you guess it) cats. There's cats and there's Bukowski: you know how that works for me.
I regret nothing.
Even though Bukowski's writing is mostly associated with booze and women, but if if you're familiar with his writing, then you also know that he also loves cats and writes about them in his books.
Now here’s a beautiful cat. Its tongue hangs out, it’s cross-eyed. Its tail is chopped off. He’s beautiful, he’s got sense. We took him to the vet to have him x-rayed—he got hit by a car. The doctor says, ‘This cat’s been run over twice, he’s been shot, his tail’s been cut off.’ I said, ‘This cat is me.’ He came to the door starving to death. He knew right where to come. We’re both bums off the street.
Bukowski writes about cats with a certain melancholy. He writes about each of their tragic fates, and how he can relate to them, and loves them.
I find my place, pull into the driveway, park it, get out, just another old matador. But inside, as I open the door, my favorite white cat, The Jinx, leaps up into my arms and suddenly I am in love again.
In my next life I want to be a cat. To sleep 20 hours a day and wait to be fed. To sit around licking my ass. Humans are too miserable and angry and single-minded. Photo: Butch Bukowski
178211727X I love cats and I love Bukowski and so it was natural that I loved this book! I didn’t even know it existed until I saw it at the library and then of course I had to borrow it.
I particularly loved the photos of Bukowski and his cats. Also the way he talks about his own cats, his love for them and their personalities. 178211727X