On Cats by Charles Bukowski

Like Bukowski. Love cats. Like people who love cats. Bukowski loved cats. Felt that with the best of them, 'each movement slides through space without friction.’ Wrote that ‘the cat is the beutiful [sic] devil.’ And so Canongate have collected his thoughts and poems on the subject (some a little unfinished, some a little unformed) and, charmingly, his feline family photos to produce this excellent collection. The pieces are warm and tender, tough and sad. Cats brought out a vulnerable side of the man which he never dared expose to the human race, and the collection is surprisingly sentimental, yet stops short of saccharine – the verses still filled with those classic Bukowski tropes of fighting and fucking (just in bushes rather than bars).

He looked at his collection of waifs and strays and saw much of himself – in his ‘cross-eyed shot runover de-tailed cat,’ that ‘dirty white / with pale blue eyes.’ Even their pissing on his computer failed to stoke his ire, or shitting in his box of poems: ‘that one-eared fat black critic/ he signed me off.’

The writing is devastating in both its honesty and simplicity. It shows a duality to this tomcat of American literature – his deep love and admiration for the creatures he felt embodied him, but also his unsated desire for the ease and grace that he, the hulking pockmarked poet, could never possess – except on the page.