The Cat Inside

I just finished reading this book. Not only is it a very fast read (I read it in an hour), but it is also the most touching book I have read in a long while. Any cat lover will love this book. This is my first taste of Burroughs, and I must say it was a wonderful taste. I have been crying ever since he spoke of Ed and not being able to find him. I highly recomend this book for anyone!

From his exasperating need to be at the highest point in the room, to his function as a wrist rest while I type, my cat is a psychic companion. Loki is a classic "one-man-cat", though he will stray when I am not available. This book is so true on many levels, even the wild fantasies... Definitely one for the library.

The Elder Statesman of the Beat Generation is best known for the fantastic creatures of his drug-induced fantasies and nightmares: the Reptiles and Mugwumps of "Naked Lunch", the ramora-like pseudo-human parasites of "Junkie", and others too loathesome to mention. In contrast, in this slim volume, William S. Burroughs introduces us to the real-life creatures who accompanied him throughout his tumultuous career and particularly during his old age. These are his numerous and beloved cats, with names like Calico Jane, Fletch, Rooski, Wimpy, and Ed. Any cat-person will identify with Burroughs' pleasure in the affection and antics of his feline friends and his heart-breaking grief in their loss. But it would be a mistake to label this book of recollections a "Warm & Fuzzy". Burroughs' affiliation with the Cat is on a quite archetypal level. He reveals a recurring sensation from his earliest childhood of cuddling a small, trusting, but long-unidentifiable creature, and to realize much later he was "cast in the role of the Guardian, to create and nurture a creature that is part cat, part human, and part something as yet unimaginable, which might result from a union that has not taken place for millions of years". This resembles the vaguely disturbing imagery of classic Burroughs, to be sure. But there comes to him a startling revelation "...and now the creature is clearly recognized as a cat spirit, a Familiar. I postulate that cats started as psychic companions, as Familiars, and have never deviated from this function." This is a shamanic departure from typical Burroughs or his contemporaries. But Bill's most "off-Beat" book will surely strike a chord with anyone who has -- or is! -- a cat Inside.

Every cat lover should read this book. This is such a touching account of the cats that come and go in Burroughs' life, with which every human graced by feline presence will identify. Burroughs is poetic, soft, and generous here. Who could have known the same man to write 'Junkie' and 'Naked Lunch' would be inspired to write a Warm Fuzzy?

In his many years of travel and artistic and psychic exploration, Mr. Burroughs encountered a wide variety of mentalities. Whether or not they were comprehensible to the rest of us, he described them and commented on their apparent roles in the universe. When he finally settled outside an east Kansas college town, he gradually became strongly involved with those small, furry, almost-alien creatures we call cats. Why humans interact so deeply with some nonhuman species, and even how those species arose, are questions this small, poetic book considers. It is much more though, a record of a man's emotional interactions with some quite different types of mind and what they revealed to him. At the least, it may bring the reader to pause at the next encounter with a cat of the house or street, and carefully consider the reserved appraisal one receives from those clear eyes