Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats director of the publishing company Faber and Faber. Morley's daughter, Susanna Smithson, uncovered the poem as part of the BBC Two programme "Arena: T.S. Eliot", broadcast that night as part of the BBC Poetry Season. Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1939) is a collection of whimsical poems by T. S. Eliot about feline psychology and sociology, published by Faber and Faber. It is the basis for the musical "Cats". Eliot wrote the poems in the 1930s, and included them, under his assumed name "Old Possum", in letters to his godchildren. They were collected
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