Macavity Macavity Macavity is a fictional character who is described in a poem in "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats", by T. S. Eliot. He also appears in "Cats", the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. The name "Macavity" is a pun by T. S. Eliot, on the names of several characters from other works of literature : "Macheath," a supervillain who appears both in John Gay's "The Beggar's Opera", its sequel "Polly" and roughly 200 years later as Mack the Knife in "The Threepenny Opera" written by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill in 1928, "macuahuitl", the Aztec obsidian sword, and "Moriarty", the
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats Scheffler (2009). The contents of "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats", along with the names of the featured cats where appropriate, are: In 1954, English composer Alan Rawsthorne set six of the poems in a work for speaker and orchestra entitled "Practical Cats", which was recorded soon afterwards, with the actor Robert Donat as the speaker. At about the same time another English composer, Humphrey Searle, composed another narrated piece based on the poems, using flute, piccolo, cello and guitar. This work, "Two Practical Cats", consists of settings of the poems about Macavity and Growltiger. The best-known musical adaptation of