Yep, this has something to do with the musical by the melodiously challenged Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Webber, along with Tim Rice, wrote “Jesus Christ Superstar” as a rock album before it was produced on stage as their third musical and, in my opinion, the last piece of music worth listening to from Messieurs Webber & Rice.

At one point in the last century, a girlfriend of mine stuffed a tennis ball in my mouth, duct-taped my arms and legs to a piano dolly and, brandishing a pistol, wheeled me in to see The Phantom of the Opera, a chunk of music with no discernable or memorable melody hiding anywhere in the 623-hour production.

The Webber – Rice modus operandi is to take a story from history or literature, bend it to fit their evil purpose, write music to it, and then hire a dump truck to take the royalty checks to the bank. This they did with Cats. Only, this time they used a book of poems written by one of the twentieth century’s greatest poets, Thomas Sterns Eliot.

Please do yourself, your children and/or your grandchildren a favor and pick up the book. It’s called Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. Then, read it out loud to yourself, your children and / or your grandchildren. The poems are charming, funny, interesting, and short enough to hold the interest of the shortest attention span.

It is still in print and there are quite a few different editions available. If I may, I’d like to suggest one particular edition. T. S. Eliot collected and published the poems in 1939 and in 1967 the world-renowned Edward Gorley illustrated the book.

The illustrations make OPBOPC almost as much fun to look at as it is to read. I love illustrated books and this is one of the best. If you can get it, this is the one to have but if you can’t acquire the Gorley edition then buy any edition you can get your hands on.

By most accounts, Eliot wrote these poems in the 1930s primarily for his godchildren, in particular Alison Tandy and Tom Faber. From the children’s perspective, the poems were written by a character called the Old Possum, hence the name of the book. This isn’t all that uncommon a practice for writers. J.R.R. Tolkien did the same thing for his grandchildren when he wrote The Hobbit. Lewis Carroll wrote Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There for his little friend Alice Liddell. There is a nasty controversy surrounding Carroll’s relationship with the 10-year-old Alice but that’s a story for another time.

At this point in his career T. S. Eliot had written poems that would change the face of twentieth century poetry: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, The Waste Land, The Hollow Men Ash Wednesday, the play Murder in the Cathedral, and what many critics consider his masterwork, Four Quartets.

This was a poet writing at the height of his considerable powers, who turned his attention to writing an “entertainment” for his godchildren. The poems in OPBOPC will delight the little ones in your life but will also resonate for you. They aren’t just for kids or cat lovers. There is considerable satire here, somewhat in the vein of Animal Farm, the great novel by George Orwell. Eliot infuses in his cats typical English characteristics to great comedic effect. You will laugh out loud.

There are also puns galore and Eliot plays with language much the same way James Joyce does in Finnegan’s Wake. In fact, Joyce and Eliot knew each other. Eliot famously found Joyce arrogant and Joyce had some unkind things to say about Eliot’s poetry. Despite this they grew to like one another and saw each other frequently.

Poetry isn’t now nor has it ever been a big business, especially for the writer. Eliot was never able to support himself solely as a poet. He taught school and worked for Lloyd’s Bank. Later he wrote book reviews and criticism to help earn extra money. Eventually he joined the publishing firm of Faber & Faber and worked there for the rest of his life. In fact as a director of the firm he was instrumental in Faber & Faber publishing Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake in Great Britain. In 1948, T. S. Eliot won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

I have successfully avoided seeing the musical Cats on three occasions. The first time I drove myself to the emergency room and then had to hide out for about six hours insisting to all the hospital personnel that there wasn’t anything wrong with me. The second time I arranged a business trip to Tacoma, Washington, and the third time I just cried uncontrollably … it wasn’t pretty.

I do, however, pull Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats off the shelf a few times a year and reacquaint myself with the most interesting bunch of cats in the English language.

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a meow