Overview

Saki’s Cats rounds up the tales about cats, big and small, by the undisputed master of the short story. ‘Tobermory’, one of Saki’s most famous pieces, demonstrates the danger that would ensue from granting cats the power of speech – animals have long lurked unseen, eavesdropping, in the background. The tom in ‘The Philanthropist and the Happy Cat’ is the only one to enjoy his meal, as is the leopard in ‘The Guests’. In ‘The Penance’ and ‘Mrs Packletide’s Tiger’, hunters who put cats in their sights are humiliated and blackmailed. ‘The Achievement of the Cat’ considers how cats have come to be served by the human race. In addition to the short stories about cats, Saki’s Cats also collects Saki’s juvenile letters to his sister Ethel about the tiger cub he adopted while living in Burma. The feisty felines of these tales are the only clear winners, and, with a characteristic smirk and dash of his pen, it is Edwardian Society that Saki sends slinking off, tail between its legs.

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9781913724177

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'His stories and novels appear as delightful and [...] sophisticated as they did when he first published them.' (Noel Coward)

Author Information

Hector Hugh Munro (1870–1916), known by his nom de plume, Saki, whose humorous writings are amongst the best known in the English literary canon, is widely considered to be a master of the short-story genre. Although he also wrote longer works of fiction, they are not nearly as popular as his short stories – ‘Tobermory’, ‘The Schartz-Metterklume Method’, ‘The Open Window’, ‘The Storyteller’, ‘The Lumber Room’ and ‘Sredni Vashtar’, in particular, enjoy a widespread readership even today. Saki also wrote extensively for the Westminster Gazette, where he published political sketches such as the Westminster Alice series. Saki’s death is almost as famous as his short stories – he was a lance sergeant in the First World War, and he was killed by a German sniper during the Battle of the Ancre while he and his company sheltered; his last words were reportedly: ‘Put that bloody cigarette out!’

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