![]() ![]() Lessing’s descriptions of their ongoing feud, and the forms it takes, is more fascinating than any battle I have read about. At the time she is writing the book they are only two and four years old respectively, and so very much present concerns – and they cannot abide each other. Then Lessing fast forwards to cats in London, and particularly to the black cat and grey cat. It is a tumultuous environment to have pets. They are at the mercy of hawks, and they are many miles from the nearest vet. ![]() Sometimes domestic cats mate with wild cats sometimes they become wild. But though it mentions various cats from different stages of Lessing’s life, it’s really about two – known as grey cat and black cat.īefore we get to their lives, we do get a whistle-stop tour of Lessing’s experience of cats in her Zimbabwean childhood – there are many, living unbridled lives that interweave with those of wild cats. ![]() In a way, it’s like Elizabeth von Arnim’s All the Dogs of My Life, in that it is a memoir that concentrates on cats that Lessing has owned, or who have owned Lessing. It is 108 pages of absolute joy for a cat lover. Particularly Cats (1967) is the third book by Doris Lessing that I’ve read – but nothing in the dystopian Memoirs of a Survivor or the grim The Fifth Child would have led me to expect something like Particularly Cats. ![]()
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