Book of cats : literary, legendary and historical.

"Dorothy Stuart approaches her subject along four main roads: archaeology, history, legend and literature. The cat emerges by turns as a goddess, an enigma, a playmate and a friend. The Ancient Egyptian Mau is here; the enchanted cats of Irish legend; the Gib of Gammer Gurton's Needle. Hodge and Selima, Jeffry and Dinah refused to be left out; but there are less familiar examples, too: the cat which voluntarily shared the Earl of Southampton's captivity in the Tower; the kitten in whose defense John Keats had a standup fight with a brutal butcher-boy of Hampstead; the delinquent who at dead of night gnawed the strings of her master's lute. Graymalkin, the witches' familiar, comes into the picture; and we catch fascinating glimpses of two furry sympathizers licking the tears from Florence Nightingale's cheeks, and of Cardinal Richelieu solemnly adding something on behalf of a cat and her kittens to the modest pension assigned by His Eminence to Mademoiselle Marie de Gournay, Montaigne's 'polished female friend'."--Amazon website.