Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    On Cats
    Unavailable
    On Cats
    Unavailable
    On Cats
    Ebook137 pages57 minutes

    On Cats

    By Charles Bukowski

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    Listen to the audiobook instead

    About this ebook

    A raw and tenderly funny look at the human-cat relationship, from one of our most treasured and transgressive writers.

    “The cat is the beautiful devil.”

    Felines touched a vulnerable spot in Charles Bukowski’s crusty soul. For the writer, there was something majestic and elemental about these inscrutable creatures he admired, sentient beings whose searing gaze could penetrate deep into our being. Bukowski considered cats to be unique forces of nature, elusive emissaries of beauty and love.

    On Cats offers Bukowski’s musings on these beloved animals and their toughness and resiliency. He honors them as fighters, hunters, survivors who command awe and respect as they grip tightly onto the world around them: “A cat is only ITSELF, representative of the strong forces of life that won’t let go.”

    Funny, moving, tough, and caring, On Cats brings together the acclaimed writer’s reflections on these animals he so admired. Bukowski’s cats are fierce and demanding—he captures them stalking their prey; crawling across his typewritten pages; waking him up with claws across the face. But they are also affectionate and giving, sources of inspiration and gentle, insistent care.

    Poignant yet free of treacle, On Cats is an illuminating portrait of this one-of-a-kind artist and his unique view of the world, witnessed through his relationship with the animals he considered his most profound teachers.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateDec 1, 2015
    ISBN9780062396013
    Author

    Charles Bukowski

    Charles Bukowski is one of America’s best-known contemporary writers of poetry and prose and, many would claim, its most influential and imitated poet. He was born in 1920 in Andernach, Germany, to an American soldier father and a German mother, and brought to the United States at the age of two. He was raised in Los Angeles and lived there for over fifty years. He died in San Pedro, California, on March 9, 1994, at the age of seventy-three, shortly after completing his last novel, Pulp. Abel Debritto, a former Fulbright scholar and current Marie Curie fellow, works in the digital humanities. He is the author of Charles Bukowski, King of the Underground, and the editor of the Bukowski collections On Writing, On Cats, and On Love.

    Read more from Charles Bukowski

    Related to On Cats

    Related ebooks

    Cats For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Year Of The Rat

      Nov 24, 2020

      Year Of The Rat
      11 min read

    • Article

      Now That I’ve Arrived

      Dec 30, 2020

      Now That I’ve Arrived
      5 min read

    • Article

      What Is a Dog?

      Mar 5, 2018

      What Is a Dog?
      16 min read

    • Article

      Season Of Goodwill? (You Might Need It)

      Nov 8, 2023

      CHRISTMAS is on the way and those of us with parrots have a lot extra to decide in the way of activities, extra food, presents, guests and so on. My first two parrots, the African greys Artha and Casper, taught me far more than I taught them. Althoug

      4 min read

    • Article

      Otterly Hilarious

      Dec 20, 2022

      Otterly Hilarious
      3 min read

    • Article

      Thirteen

      Jan 30, 2020

      Thirteen
      21 min read

    • Article

      Chunks Of Flesh

      Sep 15, 2022

      Chunks Of Flesh
      6 min read

    • Article

      A Kitchen, A Sunroom, And A Thousand Days

      Aug 5, 2019

      I was young, maybe 8 or 9. My mother was going through a time: The couple she cleaned for and whom we lived with had broken up and left us lingering in their abandoned home. She had cancer, my mother, so her head was where it was, but sometimes she w

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Wolf

      Nov 6, 2018

      The Wolf
      12 min read

    • Article

      After “The End”

      Oct 10, 2022

      I walked down the road with a hunched back and a wet cigarette in my mouth—the fire had died a while back. My hands were tucked into the pockets of my jacket, and my hair fell over my face, limiting my sight. But I wasn’t really seeing where I was go

      10 min read

    • Article

      Fearless, fabulous FERN

      Apr 7, 2022

      Fearless, fabulous FERN
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Problem with My Dachshund

      Dec 11, 2019

      The Problem with My Dachshund
      10 min read

    • Article

      My Loyal Companion

      Mar 16, 2020

      Fifteen years ago, I fell in love. My husband knew all about it, although he did warn me not to get involved. I didn’t listen, I was a woman possessed. I drove to a nearby town to meet him. The first time he saw me, he jumped up and licked my ear. Wh

      3 min read

    • Article

      Puppy Love

      Mar 19, 2021

      Puppy Love
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Ceremony

      Sep 6, 2022

      It was something. Out of nowhere, I didn’t give a shit about anything for like a month. Like nothing. I mean yeah, there’d been plenty of times where I didn’t give a shit about something. Oh that thing? Yeah, fuck that thing. I did it all the time. M

      5 min read

    • Article

      Red Kite Grey Shadow

      Nov 3, 2022

      Red Kite Grey Shadow
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Hog Whisperer

      Oct 8, 2021

      The Hog Whisperer
      3 min read

    • Article

      Lech

      Feb 8, 2022

      Lech
      4 min read

    • Article

      Festival

      Sep 15, 2018

      My husband, who loved festivals, who was a great fan of festivals, wanted to get to the square in time for the first band at eleven o’clock. From bed, the dog and I watched him dress. He tried on various T-shirts, declaring some of them too tight and

      13 min read

    • Article

      Choosing the Flowers

      Oct 10, 2022

      Choosing the Flowers
      10 min read

    • Article

      Allison Pearson

      Aug 29, 2019

      Fifteen years ago this month, I fell in love. My husband knew all about it although he did warn me not to get involved. I didn’t listen, I was a woman possessed. I drove to Luton to meet him. The first time he saw me, he jumped up and licked my ear.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Too Many Cats

      Nov 19, 2019

      Too Many Cats
      11 min read

    • Article

      Black Dog

      Sep 24, 2017

      Black Dog
      2 min read

    • Article

      Lies I Tell My Father

      Feb 10, 2024

      “How’s your job at the newspaper?” my father asks me. He is sitting on a couch, a plush throw blanket spread across his legs. “The newspaper’s fine,” I lie. I lie because it is simple. I lie because it is quick. I lie because it is easier than trying

      10 min read

    • Article

      Six Stories

      Sep 8, 2020

      I’m on the train, traveling alone, with two seats to myself. I have to use the restroom. Without thinking about it carefully, I ask a couple across the aisle if they would please watch my things for me for a moment. Then I take a closer look at them

      8 min read

    • Article

      Feline Peculiar

      Feb 23, 2020

      I know some humans manage to be both dog and cat people, but my foot is firmly in the former. I can’t help it. I’ve just never had much luck with felines. Desperate for a kitten as a kid, we finally got one from the SPCA only for it to spend its life

      2 min read

    • Article

      Counter Waves

      Oct 23, 2020

      Counter Waves
      8 min read

    • Article

      A WING AND a prayer

      Sep 28, 2021

      A raven saved my life Cate McMurray, 47, from West Midlands I ’d always known I was different. As a small child, I used to see and hear people who weren’t there. One day, I was playing hide ‘n’ seek with my two sisters, and tucked myself away in a cu

      4 min read

    Reviews for On Cats

    3.5/5

    29 ratings5 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Bukowski on Cats isn't nearly as good as Bukowski on drinking. The selections are not as intrinsically interesting in themselves, and there is some amount of repetition of the same basic story in more than one form. Still, it is interesting to see how much he loved cats for their calming effect on him. The audiobook is well read.
    • 3/5
      I finally listened to this last night. It's a collection of everything he ever published about cats and there is some duplication.
    • 3/5
      Not my jam. In fairness to the author, I'm not a fan of poetry in any modern or, for that matter, sophisticated, form. There are exceptions, and I thought maybe, being a collection On Cats, this would be one of them. Nope. There were a few - a very few - I liked and would enjoy reading again, but most of them were too focused on tragedy, and those I frankly skipped without reading.
    • 5/5
      For the most part I stay away from modern poetry. It's a medium that's been entirely taken over by artists' artists and doesn't retain patience for the uninitiated. "You don't understand what my poem means? You must be stupid." But Bukowski AND cats in the same volume? I couldn't resist. I haven't read any of this author's poetry until now, though I was aware of it. I found it mostly down-to-earth and unassuming, funny and heartfelt. It's given me a new perspective on the genre, and I'm interested in exploring more of his work.
    • 3/5
      I listened to this audiobook while driving so I wasn't able to look at the screen to see when each poem ended, though, the fact that I wasn't always able to tell if or when a poem ended is part of the reason I gave it 3 stars. Some of the poems I enjoyed and/or was able to connect to. But a lot of them I was not able to fully follow the logic or flow of the narrative within a poem. Sometimes the poems felt connected, but at other times it felt like a random collection of poems that all happened to have cats mentioned at some point. Though, the very last poem made me think that there is an overall arch showing the author's changing perspective on cats. Maybe.The narrator Roger Wayne did a good job in reading and giving different voices when there were multiple speakers within an individual poem. I would give his reading a 4 or 4.5 stars.Content Warning: some swearing and talking about male genitalia.