Cat Stories

Two centuries of literary homages to the fascinating feline: stories by writers of every stripe—from P.G. Wodehouse to Doris Lessing, from Damon Runyon to Steven Millhauser.

The essential unknowableness of cats has inspired many flights of fancy: Italo Calvino’s secret city of cats in “The Garden of Stubborn Cats,” the disappearing feline in Ursula K. Le Guin’s mind-twisting “Schrödinger’s Cat,” the cartoon rodent and his cartoon nemesis in Steven Millhauser’s “Cat ’n’ Mouse.” Cats flaunt th...