The Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, a lively, sparkling, rich book with playful rhythms and rhymes, is completely different from all of Eliot's other works.

And despite the fact that, in a sense, it has gained the greatest publicity (since it provided the libretto for the famous musical Cats, which has been playing for decades in London and New York), it remains the least translated work of Eliot and the least commented upon.

Many scholars consider it simply a game, a light moment from the stern Nobel Prize-winning poet, and they overlook it. Genesius Jones, for instance, while he analyzes at length the significance of dogs and bears in Eliot's poetry (the former symbols of fertility and the latter of souls in hell - which, like the constellation of Ursa Major, keep spinning without ever setting), is very brief when he encounters cats.

He does mention the other cats, those that appear in Eliot's serious poems (the Fog Cat in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, the street cat in The Rhapsody, the white Bengal cats, the Persian Cat, the Pouncing Cats, and others), implying that they are likely used as a symbol of man with his passions, vanities, and smallnesses, perhaps even partly of the poet himself, but ultimately leaves the topic open.

[Excerpt from the text of the introduction of the edition]