Jellicle cats Jellicle cats "Jellicle cats", or simply the "Jellicles", are a type of feline mentioned in T. S. Eliot's book "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats", and in "Cats", a stage musical written by Andrew Lloyd Webber and based on the book. Introduced in Eliot's poem "The Song of the Jellicles", they were originally depicted as commonly nocturnal gray, scruffy cats. Specifically, Eliot mentions that they like to gather at an event called the "Jellicle Ball". In the musical, a sub-plot surrounds the disappearance of the Jellicle patriarch Old Deuteronomy. The names are taken from Eliot's poem "The Naming of Cats"
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