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
T. S. Eliot From 1898 to 1905, Eliot attended Smith Academy, where his studies included Latin, Ancient Greek, French, and German. He began to write poetry when he was fourteen under the influence of Edward Fitzgerald's "Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam", a translation of the poetry of Omar Khayyam. He said the results were gloomy and despairing and he destroyed them. His first published poem, "A Fable For Feasters", was written as a school exercise and was published in the "Smith Academy Record" in February 1905. Also published there in April 1905 was his oldest surviving poem in manuscript, an untitled lyric, later revised