On Cats – Charles Bukowski

“When I am feeling low all, I have to do is watch my cats and my courage returns.”
–  excerpt from “my cats” by Charles Bukowski

I love books about cats. Fiction, nonfiction, humor, poetry, essay collections, scientific, memoirs — it doesn’t matter the genre as long as felines take center stage.

Of the dozen or so books in my ever-growing collection, most have been read (or attempted), and I can say mostly definitively that cats have remained an outsized artistic muse for centuries and an enigma that many a talented writer and scientist has attempted to decode.

Living with cats is a universal language among humans, and I enjoy that regardless of the country of origin — there’s a lot of great Asian-set stories, including the phenomenal “The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa — love and respect for felines transcends language and time. Bonus points for any story that celebrates, and doesn’t deride, cat-obsessed men, like me.

That brings me to “On Cats” by Charles Bukowski, a career spanning collection of seemingly autobiographical poetry and prose that outline the inspiration he gleaned from sharing his life with up to nine (!!!) cats at a time.

This was purchased solely for the subject matter and price ($0.99 USD on Apple Books). It’s short enough to be digested in one or two sittings but that doesn’t mean everything in here is worth the time.

Honestly, I had no idea who Bukowski was, which made the first several stories off-putting. Going in knowing that he was a darling of the beatnik era — with themes of over-exaggerated alcohol-induced machismo and overt sexism — would’ve made me less resistant to reading further.

In my first sitting, I read 20 percent of the collection and told my husband it wasn’t for me, specifically when I got to the poem “looking at the cat’s balls,” which includes references to Bukowski’s own testicles. But after a break and some research on Bukowski I decided to soldier on.

When you strip away the references to genitalia, alcoholism and embarrassingly crude depictions of women, you begin to appreciate the ways in which Bukowski captures the feline philosophy and the lessons us lesser beings can glean from how they live. It becomes clear that living with cats is how Bukowski processed his life.

Many of the entries include references to the same feline, and kudos to the editor for grouping them together and including photos (!!!). This is, in essence, a gruff love letter to the cats that shaped him. At one point he writes: “I dislike cute cat poems but I’ve written one anyhow.”

The poems that focus on his beloved Manx, a stray that was shot, run over (twice) and had his tail cut-off, were the best with its combination of funny, sweet and melancholy that celebrate a fighter’s spirit.

If you’re a fan of Bukowski, this collection is likely a must read as it features many previously unpublished works. But if you’re a cat lover looking for saccharine sweet stories, you won’t find them here.

I probably won’t pick-up another work by Bukowski, but I’ll leave you with a few of my favorite lines:

“I don’t like love as a command, as a search. It must come to you, like a hungry cat at the door.”

“Animals are inspirational. They don’t know how to lie. They are natural forces. TV can make me ill in five minutes, but I can look at an animal for hours and find nothing but grace and glory, life as it should be.”

Rating (story): 2.5/5 stars

Rating (narration): N/A

Formats: E-book (personal library)

Dates read: March 20 - 21, 2021

Multi-tasking: N/A