THE OFFICIAL TRAVELOGUE OF SIR THOMAS CAT, ESQUIRE: PROLOGUE

From THE OFFICIAL TRAVELOGUE OF SIR THOMAS CAT, ESQUIRE.
Translated from the Meowish.
Copyright December 1979.

A couple of years ago, my husband and I moved home from graduate school in Iowa to the farm in Tennessee where I had spent my childhood, and we came into a type of second ownership of a wonderful black cat. The night we found him, caught in a surprisingly early snowfall and meowing a distinctively Siamese song, we brought him indoors and named him SUMIKO after a friend of ours (a girl) from Asia. Morning revealed, however, that the cat we'd found was neither feminine, nor Asian, nor lost. His owner, from an adjoining farm, called him Thomas, and we knighted him, as far as our own kingdom was concerned, as SIR THOMAS.

It was this mercurial quality--being able to impart a completely different identity, story, and locale--which made Sir Thomas a mythically curious cat about whom to write. He spent many nights and many long, hot afternoons listening to the stories and giving them his paw print of approval.

I often wonder if he told me the stories--rather than its having been the other way around. He used to come in from the fields with tiny star-shaped weeds stuck down into his long, long fur and over his Cavalier boot-type legs. He looked like a walking constellation, with his black fur for the sky and the weeds for myriad stars. Maybe the star weeds did each contain a different story about his travels. In any case, I hope you and your cat(s) will enjoy these excerpts from from THE OFFICIAL TRAVELOGUE OF SIR THOMAS CAT, ESQUIRE.