Gus: The Theatre Cat Gus: The Theatre Cat "Gus: The Theatre Cat" is a poem by T. S. Eliot included in Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. Known as "The Theatre Cat" due to his career as an actor, Gus is an old and frail, yet revered, cat, who "suffers from palsy, which makes his paws shake." His coat is described as "shabby" and he is "no longer a terror to mice or to rats." Gus, whose full name is Asparagus, is also a character in Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical adaption of the book, "Cats". In the musical, the poem is used almost verbatim
The King of the Cats tale several times. In John Crowley's 1987 novel "The Solitudes", "The King of the Cats" is explicitly related to "the Death of Pan" as recorded by Plutarch and interpreted by St. Augustine of Hippo as a shift in World Ages. "King o'Kats" was a single on the 1992 album "Supernatural" by The 360's. "The King of the Cats" is referenced, with slight changes, in Diane Duane's 1993 "Young Wizards" novel, "A Wizard Abroad". Henry Louis Gates wrote a profile of Albert Murray in "The New Yorker" 8 April 1996 entitled "King of Cats". China Miéville takes the idea of a