A History of the Cat in Nine Chapters or Less

The eight chapters of A History of the Cat in Nine Chapters or Less are a raconteur orange cat's time-traveling tale (the orange cat who's sometime black, sometimes white, sometimes orange). He's the dreamer and is the dream of the master. He fragments as an adventurer through time/village space. There is food; there are wars; there are owners ("How many owners can a being have in a single lifetime?"). There are modes of transport--chariots, trains, boats, and witches' broomsticks. Though often on our laps, the cat is on his own, even as he's in our minds. The brilliant, courageous cat, with the voice of a poet (not a pet) and the brush stroke of a painter, permits us to accompany him where no biped has trodden. A genuine treat!
-- Martine Bellen, author of Tales of Murasaki and Other Poems, This Amazing Cage of Light: New and Selected Poems, and Moon in the Mirror: A Monodrama Opera

This is a delightful lyrical journey into the heart and history of what it means to be a cat.
-- David Grimm, author of Citizen Canine: Our Evolving Relationship with Cats and Dogs, and online news editor of Science

I love cats, but can't live with them as they are stay-at-homes (well, some may be stray-from-homes) and I travel too much. But I can travel with and love the nomadic, Odyssean cat--a strange cross between Crazy Cat & Kosmic Kat--of this book written with a feline pen held by a velvety paw. Reader rest assured: this cat, even if it can show feisty claws when the need arises, will not give you catch scratch fever. The book and the cat will, however, utterly delight you. I wish it--the book--the same number of lives any cat, stray or literary has: at least nine.
-- Pierre Joris, author of Barzakh: Poems 2000-2012, Breathturn into Timestead: The Complete Later Poetry of Paul Celan, and (with Jerome Rothenberg) Poems for the Millennium: The University of California Book of Modern and Postmodern Poetry