Particularly Cats

1967, 1971 Signet edition
Doris Lessing
Particularly Cats
Original price 95 cents, purchase price unknown
Worn paperback
B+

Lessing tells of cats she's lived with, in Africa and England (as well as a bit about her cat when she was a little girl in Iran).  The Harper's quote on the back says that she uses "none of these anthromorphic touches that make you want to throw a can of tuna at people."  Lessing actually does compare her cats to people, but she also points out their differences and admits that she doesn't always understand these small, mysterious creatures.  There's a couple in the book who give her their grey kitten because the wife thinks "she was losing the affections of the husband to the cat, just like the wife in Colette's tale," and his behaviour when the cat is on heat seems to confirm this, but the passages with them are more funny than creepy.  (The husband is wistful rather than perverted.)

While Lessing definitely sees the flaws in cats, she also is clearly fascinated by them: their beauty, their savagery, their whimsy.  When the black cat joins the household, she compares and contrasts it with the grey, and describes how their hostility changes over time to a wary peace.  That grey cat is a cowardly but successful hunter, and black cat only secure when she's got kittens, adds to the complexity of their relationships with each other and with her.  And all of it is much more interesting than any of the dynamics of the humans in Lessing's fiction.  Even the "romances" are more interesting.  Will Grey Cat mate with Mephistopheles or the handsome young tiger?  Definitely more gripping a tale than Martha's passive drifting in and out of bed with various unhappy men.