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
The King of the Cats 1929 short story "The King of the Cats" based around this folk story was selected by The Library of America for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of "American Fantastic Tales", edited by Peter Straub. Frances Jenkins Olcott's 1942 anthology "Good Stories For Great Holidays" included a version of Charlotte S. Burne's "The King of the Cats" adapted by Ernest Rhys. Barbara Sleigh's 1955 children's book "" is inspired in part by this tale, as are its two sequels, "The Kingdom of Carbonel" and "Carbonel and Callidor", which make up the "Carbonel" series. Peter Straub's 1980 novel, "Shadowland" also references the