Particularly Cats Year First Published: 1967 First Published by: Michael Joseph Category: Non-Fiction This Edition: British first edition

From the book jacket:

This little book is about the cats Doris Lessing has known or lived with, two in particular, Grey Cat and Black Cat, who are as different in character, temperament and tastes as two people, and who now share her life, mostly in London, sometimes in a Devon cottage. They are both half Siamese, and have Siamese traits: they talk, growl, complain, express themselves volubly in a number of ways.

The first serious cat in the author's life was when she was three years old, in Persia, where she spent the first five years of her life. In Africa, her childhood on a bush farm was full of cats - at one alarming point, forty of them. In London they are a very different thing - complicated, intense, emotional, taking their patterns of behaviour from the humans they live with.

Mrs. Lessing holds the view that a good part of human behaviour, much more than it is flattering to believe, is no more evolved than cat behaviour - which gives us the clue to this book - casual, informal, and indeed, gossipy, about animals and people.

• American Edition
  
• British Illustrated Revised Edition: Particularly Cats and More Cats
  
• American Illustrated Revised Edition: Particularly Cats... and Rufus
  
• British Revised Edition: Particularly Cats and Rufus the Survivor
  
• British Combined Edition: On Cats