In what I hope will become a semi-regular feature, we’ll recommend a book or short story prominently featuring cats, then follow it up with a discussion post.
The Game of Rat and Dragon is a good pick to start us off easy: Humans turn to cats to help them overcome a cosmic threat in this classic science fiction tale. It’s a short story and the entire text is available online from Project Gutenberg.
Casual readers shouldn’t have any trouble following along even if they’re not familiar with the SF genre.
Click here to read The Game of Rat and Dragon by Cordwainer Smith, one of the most imaginative and influential SF scribes of the 1950s.
The story was originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction in October of 1955 and has been featured in countless SF collections and digest in the decades since.
We’ll follow up with a discussion post in a week or so. Happy reading!
Pain In The Bud 
Excellent recommendation and I’m thrilled you’re adding this to your blog. There are some great cat-related books out there !
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Recommendations welcome! I forgot to put that in the post. If you know of any good cat books, please let me know. 🙂
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I love seeing you tout Cordwainer Smith. I have loved his stories since I was a kid. He was an underappreciated writer. Thank You
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I have to credit my teacher in a science fiction creative writing class, who assigned the story to us one week when we were working on short story structure. You’re right, Smith deserves a lot more recognition!
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