– by Waldo Japussy

It is with great pleasure that Ariel Press announces the upcoming publication of a third book by Waldo Japussy, The Ethickal Cat: A Guide To Living Nine Purrfect Lives.

Waldo created literary history when he wrote The Tao of Meow, a cat's guide to a life of self-gratification. It has sold 60,000 copies since it first appeared in 1991. Waldo, the senior cat in the household of Rose and Carl Japikse, wrote his guide to living in an ancient cuneiform script oddly resembling paw prints. Four years after he died in 1995, Waldo returned posthumorously to dictate his second book to Mr. Japikse, The Ruby Cat of Waldo Japussy. He then disappeared in the ethers for a number of years, but returned from his interstellar sojourns a few months ago and announced: “I have become an ethickal cat.”

Unsure of what Waldo meant by that statement, Mr. Japikse nonetheless perked up his ears and listened, as Waldo began to relate an incredible tale of how his life in the Japikse household had been the culmination of a series of nine lives in the homes of poets, during which he had intuitively nudged and guided each poet in their writing. To demonstrate the substance of his claim, Waldo then dictated 42 poems, in the style of one of the poets with whom he had lived. These nine lives are:

• Life #1 — with Dante Alighieri, when Waldo first penned “The Feline Comedy,” divided into three cantos: Infurrno, Purrgatory, and Fur Vana.
• Life #2— with John Keats, when Waldo wrote “Lines on the Polecat Tavern,” “La Belle Dames San Kitty,” and “Ode on a Rosetta Stone.”
• Life #3—with Edgar Allan Poe, when Waldo produced “The Bells” and “The Raven.”
• Life #4—with the Brownings, when Waldo wrote “Old Snaps” (for Robert) and “Songs from the Siamese” (for Elizabeth).
• Life #5—with Walt Whitman on Paumanok, when Waldo penned “As I Purred in Silence,” “I Sing the Body Elastic,” “Wherever You Are,” “Smiling O’er All,” “Never Once Repenting,” and “When You Call Me Waldo.”
• Life #6—with Emily Dickinson, who never let him go outside. Still, he managed to scribble “There is No Frigate Like a Cat,” “Right and Wrong,” “Grousing,” “Suspicious Minds,” “How Tall, How Small,” and “There is No Law.”
• Life #7—with William E. Henley, producing “Inflictus,” “The Song of the Pen,” “Vigil,” “Ballade of a Maneki Neko,” “Strange Ditties,” and “The Mask.”
• Life #8—spent with Robert Frost, resulting in “The Meadow,” “Doubt and Guilt,” “The Road Rue Chose,” “Sea Tunes,” “Revel-ation,” and “The Underbolt.”
• Life #9—spent with Vachel Lindsay, culminating in “The Caterwaul Yell.”

There is also one final poem, “The Last Word,” which seems to be in the style of William Wordsworth, though Waldo swears he never had a life in the Lake District.

The theme of the collection is introduced with a poem called “My Tenth Life,” which vaguely resembles the style of Alexander Pope. In this “prowlogue,” as Waldo calls it, he vividly describes the after life, in which he exists as an ethical cat, yet still remains closely tied to all of the poets he has collaborated with. It is a marvelous introduction to the ongoing nature of life and what Waldo calls “caternity”:

For seventeen years, I lived as a kitty,
With all of the pomp that clearly befit me.
It’s been seventeen more since when I died
But I’m still in your life, still by your side,
Chasing ideas, instead of a mouse,
Scrambling for insights all over the house!

144 pages, 6 x 9, with 10 charming pen and ink illustrations by Nancy Maxwell Expected Publication Date: December 10, 2011

When published, a copy of The Ethickal Cat will sell for $19 plus $6 shipping.
Order it before December 10, 2011 and pay only $15 per book, plus shipping.
$14 in ebook or epub format
Order 10 copies—what a wonderful Christmas gift!—and pay only $12 per book!
($120 total, plus $8 for shipping = $128)

To order, send a check or money order to Ariel Press, 88 North Gate Station Drive, #106, Marble Hill, GA 30148.