Tuesday, May 24, 2022

Short Story Wednesday -- Catfantastic: Nine Lives and Fifteen Tales


Recently my son went through his paperback books for books to donate to the book sale. He offered me three short story anthologies in the Catfantastic series, and I just could not pass them up without reading some of the stories first. 

I read the first two stories from Catfantastic: Nine Lives and Fifteen Tales, edited by Andre Norton and Martin H. Greenberg. I liked both of them, so I guess I will be holding on to all the books for a while. The book is designated (on the cover) as fantasy, but I think some of the stories are science fiction. 


"The Gate of the Kittens" by Wilanne Schneider Belden

I found this first story to be confusing, much was not explained. The writing was excellent though. A young cat is a mouser for a property. The master of the property has located a Gate which allows things to pass from one world to the other. To test the gate the Master chooses to send the cat to the other side. On the other side, Judith, a librarian out in the bookmobile nearly runs into a cat in the road. She rescues the cat and further adventures ensue. 

It seemed to be a sort of time travel tale, but one reviewer noted a connection to Andre Norton's Witch World. I would have liked this better if it had been longer and the story expanded. The cat and the librarian were great characters.


"The Damcat" by Clare Bell

This story focuses on two men who are involved in building the Black Canyon Dam. One is a white man, an engineer, who takes measurements to assure the structure of the dam is safe. The other man, Mike, is of the Hopi tribe and is a high-scaler; high-scalers climb down the canyon walls and prepare the surface for the concrete pour. The cat in this story is a small bobcat that is Mike's partner in his work. Although there were definitely supernatural elements in the story, the story was fairly straightforward and very interesting. 



This original anthology of fantastic cat tales was published in 1989 and all of the stories were first published in this book. I look forward to reading more stories in this book and I will probably sample some from Catfantastic II and Catfantastic III also.


10 comments:

George said...

I have the paperback versions of CATFANTASTIC. The 1980s were a great time for anthologies like this! Love that cover!

Cath said...

I love the sound of this, Tracy. Must see if I can turn up a copy. You know, for years I was convinced that Andre Norton was a man, I was really quite shocked when I found out 'he' was a woman.

TracyK said...

George, the copies I have are also paperbacks, and unfortunately have tiny type. But if I use reading lights I can read them OK. I was surprised that there were a total of five of the CATFANTASTIC anthologies. And in some of them, the authors had stories that continued from stories in earlier anthologies.

TracyK said...

Cath, I have not read anything by Andre Norton (so now I can read her story in this book). I hope you find a copy. As with all anthologies, the reviews were mixed. Some readers loved all the stories, most had some they loved, some they didn't.

Margot Kinberg said...

You know, I hadn't thought of cat-themed stories like that, Tracy, but they sound appealing. And speculative fiction can be a good way to explore a theme like that...

TracyK said...

Margot, I agree with you. Setting the stories in a science fictional or fantasy world gives more possibilities for making use of cats as characters.

CLM said...

I remember these books although I never read them. I bet your son has that virtuous feeling one gets when one trims the book collection, even though the books have not actually left the house!

TracyK said...

I am sure he does, Constance. He did get rid of quite a few; there were many he did not take. And he found another short story anthology to lend to me; that is going to be a good read I am sure.

pattinase (abbott) said...

I have never had an animal. I am allergic to cats and although I like dogs in books, not so much in read life. I wonder why cats seem to occupy so much more pages of fiction than dogs. Is it that writers tend to be cat people? Or are cats more mysterious?

TracyK said...

Patti: We have had cats (one at a time) for about 20 years. The twenty years before that we had two dogs. We are not really active enough to keep dogs exercised enough. Lately there have been a lot of mystery series with K-9 dogs as partners, but I haven't read any of those. And not many of the books featuring cats either. I think they work well in this short story format. And fantasy does work well for cats.