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Summary
Summary
Look what The New Yorker dragged in! It's the purr-fect gathering of talent celebrating our feline companions.
This bountiful collection, beautifully illustrated in full color, features articles, fiction, humor, poems, cartoons, cover art, drafts, and drawings from the magazine's archives. Among the contributors are Margaret Atwood, T. Coraghessan Boyle, Roald Dahl, Wolcott Gibbs, Robert Graves, Emily Hahn, Ted Hughes, Jamaica Kincaid, Steven Millhauser, Haruki Murakami, Amy Ozols, Robert Pinsky, Jean Rhys, James Thurber, John Updike, Sylvia Townsend Warner, and E. B. White. Including a Foreword by Anthony Lane, this gorgeous keepsake will be a treasured gift for all cat lovers.
Praise for The Big New Yorker Book of Cats
"The Book of Cats comes a year after The Big New Yorker Book of Dogs --a publishing slight that, though it stings, I'll forgive, as the latest anthology was worth the wait. . . . Two standout articles feature real-life obsessives of ages past who reveal today's Caturnet devotees--with their GIFs and Tumblrs and hastily aggregated listicles--for what they truly are: amateurs. . . . Eat your heart out, Cute Overload." -- The New York Times Book Review
"A beautiful hardcover." --Jenny McCarthy, People
"This irresistible anthology of articles, poems, essays, fiction, cartoons, and covers pulled from the New Yorker is a veritable treasure trove for cat lovers. Just dive right in; with stories from the likes of John Updike, Maeve Brennan, Roald Dalhl, and Haruki Murakami interwoven with hilariously wry cartoons, one can't help but be enthralled. A must-have." -- Modern Cat
"A shiny, well-fed tome . . . The anthology embodies the cat's defining characteristic: its cluster of opposites, rolled together into a giant hairball of cultural attitudes--something, perhaps, at once uncomfortably and assuringly reflective of our own chronically conflicted selves." -- Brain Pickings
"This gorgeous book has earned a permanent spot on my coffee table. It is an absolute joy to read and browse through, and I know it will bring me hours and hours of pleasure for years to come. And it makes a purr-fect gift for the special cat lovers in your life." -- The Conscious Cat
"[A] sumptuous volume." -- The Dallas Morning News
Author Notes
The New Yorker began publishing in 1925.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Here comes the effervescent counterpart to 2012's Big New Yorker Book of Dogs, an anthology of short fiction, articles, photographs, and of course, cat cartoons-an unassailable gift for the cat-lover in your life. The non-fiction spans from the fanciful-a lovely little piece from the 80s about a cat therapist operating in Manhattan-to the bizarre-Ariel Levy's excellent 2013 piece about exotic cat fanciers-people who will pay "as much as thirty thousand dollars for the privilege of owning a hybrid that looks like it could prowl the wilderness"-like, for example, the "Savannah cat, a cross between a domestic and a serval, an African native that preys on gazelles and springbok." The book spans the entire New Yorker history, and it's interesting to see how profiles have evolved, from a whimsical piece about a chorus girl turned cat-catcher from 1938 to Susan Orlean's masterful 2002 profile "The Lady and the Tigers," about a woman who owned up to two dozen tigers in Jackson Township, New Jersey. Readers will also enjoy a short story from Haruki Murakami, "Town of Cats" as well as fiction from John Updike, and Jean Rhys. Here is the rare coffee table book that is also a pleasure to read. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
A worthy follow-up to last year's Big New Yorker Book of Dogs. Covers, cartoons, authors of pieces both longer and shorter, reflect current views of the feline subject in all its glory, and sometimes disgrace, as well as those of bygone days. Poets like Ted Hughes and Robert Graves sit alongside contributions from the magazine's former regular columnists--e.g., James Thurber's 1952 post-party tale "The Case of Dimity Ann" and E.B White's informative "How To Make a Cat Trap" (1930). White offers both a complicated assembly job and a simpler, more lethal one for those hardy enough to try. In "The Cats" (2003), John Updike writes about inheriting eight acres and countless cats. Included in this generous collection are big cats, lost cats, Army cats, bookstore and even wine-shop cats, cat therapists, a cat man, catsitters and cat savers. Cartoons and covers reflect more of these cross or interspecies types of rapport and humor. In 1954, a Republican owner of a Manx cat reported his pet's reaction to the mention of the name "Harry Truman" and how he got her down from the living room mantel by saying "Eisenhower." In one cartoon, a dinner-party host arrives with a cat perched atop a tray and asks his guests, "Cat, anyone?"; another cartoon wonders, "Who's Really Running the City." This theme is also echoed in some of the selections included among the 24 cover reproductions, like the Sleeping Beauty from Nov. 24, 1997, or the Cat vs. Dog game of chess from June 24, 1974. Other contributors include Roald Dahl, Jamaica Kincaid, Haruki Murakami, Susan Orlean, Robert Pinsky, Ariel Levy, T.C. Boyle and Steven Millhauser. The quality, humor and variety make for another successful New Yorker collection.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
New York Review of Books Review
LOOK - how can you not? - at the supple creature stretched across the divan. Legs bent and parted, arms folded overhead, eyes trained on some distant vision. She could lounge that way for hours, it seems, staring at the wall, or through the human who gazes on her, he confounded by her aloofness, tormented by what he cannot know: What does she feel? What does she desire? What does she think of me? Girl or cat. Either could inhabit the scene. It was the impish genius of the French-born painter Balthasar Klossowski, a.k.a. Balthus (1908-2001), to pair them, repeatedly, in portraits created over the course of two decades, beginning in the 1930s. These paintings are the subject of an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (running through Jan. 12) and of the accompanying catalog by the exhibition's curator, Sabine Rewald. Moody and ambiguous, Balthus's work is rarely cheerful, despite the omnipresence of cats with Cheshire grins. His girl models, draped over furniture or posed on the floor on all fours, "peer into mirrors, read or daydream" and "appear completely self-absorbed," Rewald writes, their postures conveying "sensuality and languor, sometimes ungainliness,... perfectly in keeping with the phenomenon of puberty" - and the comportment of cats. From boyhood, Balthus was a cat nut. A treat of the exhibition is "Mitsou: Forty Images," a tender and melancholy pencil-and-ink series he drew at age 11. Here are joy and mischief, frustration, worry and loss, as the young Balthus rescues a stray, tries to tame it (folly, that) and, despite his devotion, is eventually spurned. A Freudian would say that from this primal wound sprang Balthus's fixations and fetishes, and that evidence of this can be found in the decades of work that followed: the self-portrait of a rangy Balthus, "H.M. the King of Cats," a furry sidekick nuzzling against his leg; the ravishing sequence of his neighbor Thérèse Blanchard, 10 portraits in all, including one in which we glimpse the ingénue's white undergarments and a cat lapping milk from a dish, a "tongue-in-cheek erotic metaphor," Rewald writes; "Nude With a Cat," in which a woman "undulates" while stroking a "deliriously happy, smiling cat" - the animal in so many of these paintings a stand-in, Rewald posits, for Balthus himself. The artist, who in later life played coy regarding the intent behind his images, might protest. "I really don't understand why people see the paintings of girls as Lolitas," he said. Rewald dismisses such remarks as feigned bafflement. A great strength of Rewald's catalog is its informed (if brief) reading of Balthus's confrères in the portrayal of un-selfconscious eroticism: Balthus has claimed Poussin as a major influence; Rewald also finds "haunting prototypes" in paintings by Gericault, Courbet and Degas, and in one instance points out interesting echoes with Man Ray, Munier and a Pears' Soap advertisement. I could have used more of this, less of the heavy-breathing hype - after all, this is not Indifferent Cats in Amateur Porn. (A separate breed of genius.) The Met exhibition promises "paintings and provocations" and, as you enter, warns that the art inside "may be disturbing." Anything to sell a few more tickets, I suppose, although I can't help wincing at the prim moralizing. The sensuality of Balthus's work is plain: How the viewer will or should react is anything but. Art provokes, period - and therein lies the thrill of looking. Thankfully, even the Met's youngest patrons seem to have seen through the pandering. On the day I visited the museum, a boy broke free of his mother's grasp outside the exhibit and scampered past a guard, who called out, "How old are you?" "I'm 11!" the boy whooped back. "And I want to be provoked!" Somewhere, Balthus - King of Cats - surely purred. AT LEAST ONE Balthusian heroine graces the pages of "The Big New Yorker Book of Cats" : a girl with a "chopped black Cleopatra haircut and wise blue eyes" who, in a David Schickler short story from 2000, lures her antisocial English teacher to dinner with her family. This kitten, who chews her hair suggestively and derails class discussion (and her teacher's concentration) with disarming non sequiturs, appends curious, borderline-inappropriate notes to the ends of her papers and makes disconcerting late-night phone calls: "Do you know what's happening to my ankle as we converse?" "No," the unwitting teacher replies. "John Stapleton is licking it. He likes to nibble my toes, too." John Stapleton being a cat, naturally. The "Book of Cats" comes a year after "The Big New Yorker Book of Dogs" - a publishing slight that, though it stings, I'll forgive, as the latest anthology was worth the wait. Comprising 57 works of prose and poetry (with pictures!), it assembles quite a cast, both feline and human. We meet cats loitering at wine shops and book shops, a cat that stops at Sardi's on book tour, cats prone to vice ("He took up with the most frightful females"), cats gazing vainly into mirrors while reciting Blake ("What immortal hand or eye/Could frame thy fearful symmetry?"). Alastair Reid admires cats ("Imagination prowls at night,/catlike among odd possibilities"), while E.B. White wants to dispatch them efficiently ("Insert into the trap a tablespoonful of calcium cyanide or a wad of cotton saturated with one ounce of carbon disulfide or chloroform"). But the cats bite back. It's not too far a stretch to say that if cats were writers, they'd be critics. "To write like a cat," Anthony Lane observes in a foreword, is "to find a new angle from which to pronounce, with a lightly modulated hiss, upon the infinite gradations of human sin." Consider the pedantic assessment flung at a silly human who mutters, "Bad luck!" on crossing one feline narrator: "This little action suggested to me that his eyes were failing or that he was paranoidal, for, though a black cat, I have a redeeming band of white at my throat." Or this, by a cat sussing out the motives of a human adversary: "I intend to be fair about this if it kills me." Two standout articles feature real-life obsessives of ages past who reveal today's Caturnet devotees - with their GIFs and Tumblrs and hastily aggregated listicles - for what they truly are: amateurs. Introduced to readers in 1951, Robert Lothar Kendell, president of the American Feline Society, compiled "the world's largest list of friends of the cat - some 92,000 presumed ailurophiles," and in his office kept "innumerable photographs of cats - cats yawning, cats playing, cats sleeping, cats pouncing, cats watching birds, ... cats looking bored or supercilious, cats suffering the gingerly fondling of movie stars clad in bathing suits or evening gowns, cats staring in amazement out of airplanes." Eat your heart out, Cute Overload. Then there is Rita Ross, a chorus girl turned cat catcher who, between 1919 and 1938, herded for "painless destruction" over "200 tons of cats." In search of her quarry, the lionhearted Ross penetrated "sewers, elevator shafts and cellars," ascended rooftops and scrabbled through "freight yards, abattoirs, bridges and cemeteries." Consumed by her work, she had few other interests and "would rather kiss a cat than the best man who ever walked on two feet." Most fascinating to me was a 1986 essay by Vicki Hearne (poet, philosopher, animal trainer) delving into the complex psychological interplay between cats and people. "Our cats are looking at us," Hearne writes, "and perhaps the thing about ailurophobes" - fraidy-cat humans - "is that they don't want to be looked at like that. ... Perhaps the aloofness story is one we tell ourselves in order not to know that we are being looked at. But why should we not want to be looked at?" Why not indeed. Jennifer b. McDonald is an editor at the Book Review.
Library Journal Review
Dogs had their day in The Big New Yorker Book of Dogs, and now cats rule in this engaging feline anthology. This fun collection of short stories, articles, humor, poems, and charming color covers from the magazine's archives devotes sections to fat cats, alley cats, cat fanciers, and curious cats. Writers such as John Updike, Ted Hughes, James Thurber, Elizabeth Bishop, Margaret Atwood, and Roald Dahl recall their own pets, lost cats, experiences rescuing cats, old and young women and their cats, and the sheer joy of observing the animals just being themselves. Peter Matthiessen focuses on endangered large cats in "Tiger in the Snow," and Susan -Orlean describes one woman's tiger sanctuary in "The Lady and the Tigers." Cartoonists such as William Steig, Sam Gross, and others provide laugh-out-loud scenarios that capture important things in life: eating, sleeping, adventure, litter boxes, and scratching the furniture. VERDICT Patrons will thoroughly enjoy browsing these pages with their furry friends nearby in this high-quality, attractive work.-Eva -Lautemann, formerly with Georgia Perimeter Coll. Lib., Clarkston (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Chapter 1 DEATH OF A FAVORITE Fiction J. F. POWERS I had spent most of the afternoon mousing--a matter of sport with me and certainly not of diet--in the sunburnt fields that begin at our back door and continue hundreds of miles into the Dakotas. I gradually gave up the idea of hunting, the grasshoppers convincing me that there was no percentage in stealth. Even to doze was difficult, under such conditions, but I must have managed it. At least I was late coming to dinner, and so my introduction to the two missionaries took place at table. They were surprised, as most visitors are, to see me take the chair at Father Malt's right. Father Malt, breaking off the conversation (if it could be called that), was his usual dear old self. "Fathers," he said, "meet Fritz." I gave the newcomers the first good look that invariably tells me whether or not a person cares for cats. The mean old buck in charge of the team did not like me, I could see, and would bear watching. The other one obviously did like me, but he did not appear to be long enough from the seminary to matter. I felt that I had broken something less than even here. "My assistant," said Father Malt, meaning me, and thus unconsciously dealing out our fat friend at the other end of the table. Poor Burner! There was a time when, thinking of him, as I did now, as the enemy, I could have convinced myself I meant something else. But he is the enemy, and I was right from the beginning, when it could only have been instinct that told me how much he hated me even while trying (in his fashion!) to be friendly. (I believe his prejudice to be acquired rather than congenital, and very likely, at this stage, confined to me, not to cats as a class--there is that in his favor. I intend to be fair about this if it kills me.) My observations of humanity incline me to believe that one of us--Burner or I--must ultimately prevail over the other. For myself, I should not fear if this were a battle to be won on the solid ground of Father Malt's affections. But the old man grows older, the grave beckons to him ahead, and with Burner pushing him from behind, how long can he last? Which is to say: How long can I last? Unfortunately, it is naked power that counts most in any rectory, and as things stand now, I am safe only so long as Father Malt retains it here. Could I--this impossible thought is often with me now--could I effect a reconciliation and alliance with Father Burner? Impossible! Yes, doubtless. But the question better asked is: How impossible? (Lord knows I would not inflict this line of reasoning upon myself if I did not hold with the rumors that Father Burner will be the one to succeed to the pastorate.) For I do like it here. It is not at all in my nature to forgive and forget, certainly not as regards Father Burner, but it is in my nature to come to terms (much as nations do) when necessary, and in this solution there need not be a drop of good will. No dog can make that statement, or take the consequences, which I understand are most serious, in the world to come. Shifts and ententes. There is something fatal about the vocation of favorite, but it is the only one that suits me, and, all things considered--to dig I am not able, to beg I am ashamed--the rewards are adequate. "We go through Chicago all the time," said the boss missionary, who seemed to be returning to a point he had reached when I entered. I knew Father Malt would be off that evening for a convention in Chicago. The missionaries, who would fill in for him and conduct a forty hours' devotion on the side, belonged to an order just getting started in the diocese and were anxious to make a good impression. For the present, at least, as a kind of special introductory offer, they could be had dirt-cheap. Thanks to them, pastors who'd never been able to get away had got a taste of Florida last winter. "Sometimes we stay over in Chicago," bubbled the young missionary. He was like a rookie ballplayer who hasn't made many road trips. "We've got a house there," said the first, whose name in religion, as they say, was--so help me--Philbert. Later, Father Burner would get around it by calling him by his surname. Father Malt was the sort who wouldn't see anything funny about "Philbert," but it would be too much to expect him to remember such a name. "What kind of a house?" asked Father Malt. He held up his hearing aid and waited for clarification. Father Philbert replied in a shout, "The Order owns a house there!" Father Malt fingered his hearing aid. Father Burner sought to interpret for Father Philbert. "I think, Father, he wants to know what it's made out of." "Red brick--it's red brick," bellowed Father Philbert. "My house is red brick," said Father Malt. "I noticed that," said Father Philbert. Father Malt shoved the hearing aid at him. "I know it," said Father Philbert, shouting again. Father Malt nodded and fed me a morsel of fish. Even for a Friday, it wasn't much of a meal. I would not have been sorry to see this housekeeper go. "All right, all right," said Father Burner to the figure lurking behind the door and waiting for him, always the last one, to finish. "She stands and looks in at you through the crack," he beefed. "Makes you feel like a condemned man." The housekeeper came into the room, and he addressed the young missionary (Burner was a great one for questioning the young): "Ever read any books by this fella Koestler, Father?" "The Jesuit?" the young one asked. "Hell, no, he's some kind of a writer. I know the man you mean, though. Spells his name different. Wrote a book--apologetics." "That's the one. Very--" "Dull." "Well . . ." "This other fella's not bad. He's a writer who's ahead of his time--about fifteen minutes. Good on jails and concentration camps. You'd think he was born in one if you ever read his books." Father Burner regarded the young missionary with absolute indifference. "But you didn't." "No. Is he a Catholic?" inquired the young one. "He's an Austrian or something." "Oh." The housekeeper removed the plates and passed the dessert around. When she came to Father Burner, he asked her privately, "What is it?" "Pudding," she said, not whispering, as he would have liked. "Bread pudding?" Now he was threatening her. "Yes, Father." Father Burner shuddered and announced to everybody, "No dessert for me." When the housekeeper had retired into the kitchen, he said, "Sometimes I think he got her from a hospital and sometimes, Father, I think she came from one of your fine institutions"--this to the young missionary. Father Philbert, however, was the one to see the joke, and he laughed. "My God," said Father Burner, growing bolder. "I'll never forget the time I stayed at your house in Louisville. If I hadn't been there for just a day--for the Derby, in fact--I'd have gone to Rome about it. I think I've had better meals here." At the other end of the table, Father Malt, who could not have heard a word, suddenly blinked and smiled; the missionaries looked to him for some comment, in vain. "He doesn't hear me," said Father Burner. "Besides, I think he's listening to the news." "I didn't realize it was a radio too," said the young missionary. "Oh, hell, yes." "I think he's pulling your leg," said Father Philbert. "Well, I thought so," said the young missionary ruefully. "It's an idea," said Father Burner. Then in earnest to Father Philbert, whom he'd really been working around to all the time--the young one was decidedly not his type--"You the one drivin' that new Olds, Father?" "It's not mine, Father," said Father Philbert with a meekness that would have been hard to take if he'd meant it. Father Burner understood him perfectly, however, and I thought they were two persons who would get to know each other a lot better. "Nice job. They say it compares with the Cad in power. What do you call that color--oxford or clerical gray?" "I really couldn't say, Father. It's my brother's. He's a layman in Minneapolis--St. Stephen's parish. He loaned it to me for this little trip." Father Burner grinned. He could have been thinking, as I was, that Father Philbert protested too much. "Thought I saw you go by earlier," he said. "What's the matter--didn't you want to come in when you saw the place?" Father Philbert, who was learning to ignore Father Malt, laughed discreetly. "Couldn't be sure this was it. That house on the other side of the church, now--" Father Burner nodded. "Like that, huh? Belongs to a Mason." Father Philbert sighed and said, "It would." "Not at all," said Father Burner. "I like 'em better than K.C.s." If he could get the audience for it, Father Burner enjoyed being broad-minded. Gazing off in the direction of the Mason's big house, he said, "I've played golf with him." The young missionary looked at Father Burner in horror. Father Philbert merely smiled. Father Burner, toying with a large crumb, propelled it in my direction. "Did a bell ring?" asked Father Malt. "His P.A. system," Father Burner explained. "Better tell him," he said to the young missionary. "You're closer. He can't bring me in on those batteries he uses." "No bell," said the young missionary, lapsing into basic English and gestures. Father Malt nodded, as though he hadn't really thought so. "How do you like it?" said Father Burner. Father Philbert hesitated, and then he said, "Here, you mean?" "I wouldn't ask you that," said Father Burner, laughing. "Talkin' about that Olds. Like it? Like the Hydramatic?" "No kiddin', Father. It's not mine," Father Philbert protested. "All right, all right," said Father Burner, who obviously did not believe him. "Just so you don't bring up your vow of poverty." He looked at Father Philbert's uneaten bread pudding--"Had enough?"--and rose from the table, blessing himself. The other two followed when Father Malt, who was feeding me cheese, waved them away. Father Burner came around to us, bumping my chair--intentionally, I know. He stood behind Father Malt and yelled into his ear, "Any calls for me this aft?" He'd been out somewhere, as usual. I often thought he expected too much to happen in his absence. "There was something . . ." said Father Malt, straining his memory, which was poor. "Yes?" "Now I remember--they had the wrong number." Father Burner, looking annoyed and downhearted, left the room. "They said they'd call back," said Father Malt, sensing Father Burner's disappointment. I left Father Malt at the table reading his Office under the orange light of the chandelier. I went to the living room, to my spot in the window from which I could observe Father Burner and the missionaries on the front porch, the young one in the swing with his breviary--the mosquitoes, I judged, were about to join him--and the other two just smoking and standing around, like pool players waiting for a table. I heard Father Philbert say, "Like to take a look at it, Father?" "Say, that's an idea," said Father Burner. I saw them go down the front walk to the gray Olds parked at the curb. With Father Burner at the wheel they drove away. In a minute they were back, the car moving uncertainly--this I noted with considerable pleasure until I realized that Father Burner was simply testing the brakes. Then they were gone, and after a bit, when they did not return, I supposed they were out killing poultry on the open road. That evening, when the ushers dropped in at the rectory, there was not the same air about them as when they came for pinochle. Without fanfare, Mr. Bauman, their leader, who had never worked any but the center aisle, presented Father Malt with a travelling bag. It was nice of him, I thought, when he said, "It's from all of us," for it could not have come from all equally. Mr. Bauman, in hardware, and Mr. Keller, the druggist, were the only ones well off, and must have forked out plenty for such a fine piece of luggage, even after the discount. Father Malt thanked all six ushers with little nods in which there was no hint of favoritism. "Ha," he kept saying. "You shouldn'a done it." The ushers bobbed and ducked, dodging his flattery, and kept up a mumble to the effect that Father Malt deserved everything they'd ever done for him and more. Mr. Keller came forward to instruct Father Malt in the use of the various clasps and zippers. Inside the bag was another gift, a set of military brushes, which I could see they were afraid he would not discover for himself. But he unsnapped a brush, and, like the veteran crowd-pleaser he was, swiped once or twice at his head with it after spitting into the bristles. The ushers all laughed. "Pretty snazzy," said the newest usher--the only young blood among them. Mr. Keller had made him a clerk at the store, had pushed through his appointment as alternate usher in the church, and was gradually weaning him away from his motorcycle. With Mr. Keller, the lad formed a block to Mr. Bauman's power, but he was perhaps worse than no ally at all. Most of the older men, though they pretended a willingness to help him meet the problems of an usher, were secretly pleased when he bungled at collection time and skipped a row or overlapped one. Mr. Keller produced a box of ten-cent cigars, which, as a personal gift from him, came as a bitter surprise to the others. He was not big enough, either, to attribute it to them too. He had anticipated their resentment, however, and now produced a bottle of milk of magnesia. No one could deny the comic effect, for Father Malt had been known to recommend the blue bottle from the confessional. "Ha!" said Father Malt, and everybody laughed. "In case you get upset on the trip," said the druggist. "You know it's the best thing," said Father Malt in all seriousness, and then even he remembered he'd said it too often before. He passed the cigars. The box went from hand to hand, but, except for the druggist's clerk, nobody would have one. Father Malt, seeing this, wisely renewed his thanks for the bag, insisting upon his indebtedness until it was actually in keeping with the idea the ushers had of their own generosity. Certainly none of them had ever owned a bag like that. Father Malt went to the housekeeper with it and asked her to transfer his clothes from the old bag, already packed, to the new one. When he returned, the ushers were still standing around feeling good about the bag and not so good about the cigars. They'd discuss that later. Father Malt urged them to sit down. He seemed to want them near him as long as possible. They were his friends, but I could not blame Father Burner for avoiding them. He was absent now, as he usually managed to be when the ushers called. If he ever succeeded Father Malt, who let them have the run of the place, they would be the first to suffer--after me! As Father Malt was the heart, they were the substance of a parish that remained rural while becoming increasingly suburban. They dressed up occasionally and dropped into St. Paul and Minneapolis, "the Cities," as visiting firemen into Hell, though it would be difficult to imagine any other place as graceless and far-gone as our own hard little highway town--called Sherwood but about as sylvan as a tennis court. Excerpted from The Big New Yorker Book of Cats by New Yorker Magazine Staff All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.