Particularly Cats

Particularly Cats is a collection of essays about cats by the British writer Doris Lessing, winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature. She begins with her childhood on an African farm, writing about the cats that roamed the Rhodesian veld: cats still half-wild, coming and going as they please, and later the house cats that shared her London flat, each with a temperament of its own. Her beautiful grey cat and the introspective black cat each scheme in their own way for favor, while two mother cats raise their litters in utterly different ways, a contrast that cannot help but make one smile. Rufus, a stray, survives one close call after another, through illness and wandering, before finally finding a home; and Badge, the magnificent tom, goes from a lordly aristocrat among cats to an old age of injury, disability, and failing health. Lessing neither treats cats as fluffy playthings nor indulges in easy anthropomorphism; she patiently observes their hierarchies, territories, moods, and pride, writing of their elegance and cruelty, their tenderness and cunning, and also of the selfishness, guilt, and reluctance people feel when caring for a cat. While portraying cats, she is also writing half her own life, from colonial girlhood to London writer, and the difficulty and possibility of one form of life drawing close to another. The Chinese edition was translated by Peng Qianwen and includes additional pieces such as "Lessing and Cats" and the 2007 Nobel Prize presentation speech.