On Cats by Charles Bukowski
Nonfiction | Poetry | Animals
Published by Ecco
Released December 1st, 2015
Goodreads | Amazon
Rating: 
As a cat mom and someone who has always lived with cats, I really appreciated Charles Bukowski’s poems and anecdotes about his feline friends in the collection, On Cats. He clearly loved each cat that came into his life, and anyone who has lived with a cat will immediately see themselves in his writing.
I’ve never read anything else by Bukowski (although I would like to in the future), so I can’t compare this to anything else that he’s written. In the literary world, Bukowski had a reputation for being controversial, sexist, and cynical. I don’t know enough about him or his life to form an opinion, so I’m not going to get into any of that. However, based on this single collection, I did appreciate his tone and candor, which is something that will prompt me to read more.
In On Cats, he doesn’t just talk about cats in an abstract or general way; instead, he focuses on the specific cats that have come into his life, their tragedies, joy, and fates. For example, a cat that gets hit by a car and then makes a full recovery, or a cat that jumps through the window.
There’s honestly not too much that I can say about On Cats. It is, quite literally, a collection of anecdotes, poems, pictures, and stories about cats. I recommend it for many reasons, but particularly because it’s full of such wisdom as this:
“Having a bunch of cats around is good. If you’re feeling bad, just look at the cats, you’ll feel better, because they know that everything is, just as it is.”
How true is that?
I feel lazy writing a review this short, but here we are. If you like cats, read On Cats. If you enjoy Charles Bukowski, then, again, read On Cats.
Read Yourself Happy 