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.
