The Cat's Tales: Feline Fairy Tales and Folklore - Charlie Creed - ★★★★.¼

AUTHOR: Charlie Creed

GENRE: Fairytale Collection.

PUBLICATION DATE: October 23, 2025.

RATING: 4.25 stars.

In a Nutshell: An illustrated collection of feline fairytales and folktales from all over the world. Great organisation and brilliant introductions to each segment. A fabulous option for cat lovers, as long as they remember that fairytales and folktales haven’t necessarily aged well.

Quite a few folktales and fairytales include animals as characters. And one of the most common creatures to be found in these is the cat. This book collects forty such stories from twenty-eight countries/cultures. Almost all regions of the world are represented. The earliest stories in this compilation, taken from traditional oral lore, are thousands of years old. The most recent one is from the nineteenth century.

The introductory note, brilliantly penned, highlights the role of cats in fairytales and folklore. It then explains the basis of organisation for this book. The forty stories have been distributed across seven categories. The first section contains stories connected to the origins of cats, and the remaining six explore one essential feline element each, such as ‘The Greedy Cat’, ‘The Malevolent Cat’, ‘The Mischievous Cat’, and so on. This method works amazingly well, because the key adjective in the section title prepares us for the kind of cats and themes to expect in the story.

The writing style is quite raconteurial. As many of the tales are from oral traditions or classic collections, there is a strong storytelling feel to each entry. Many use repetition, onomatopoeia, and hyperbole to enhance the dramatic impact. These features make the book a good option for read-alouds as well. The stories vary in length, but most would fit suitably for a bedtime reading session.

The tales are, as expected, of their time. They are fun and magical and even moralistic, but they are also slightly misogynistic and cruel. I was disappointed to see so many daughters being handed over by their wealthy fathers as a prize to some lowly man who did one thing right, and so many lacklustre men winning favours from stunning women. The animal fables came with their own brand of cruelty, with the cat often using its position as a meso-predator to attack and kill. Then again, these aren’t flaws of the book but of the original fairytales, so I cannot really hold this as a shortcoming of the collection. But such content did affect my enjoyment, and in turn, my overall rating.

Given that many of the stories have roots in conventional storytelling, they contain timeless morals that provoke thought even today. Sample this: "Beware of fools with pretensions of greatness." Doesn’t that remind you of several world leaders these days?

What I love the most about this book is that it is chock-full of elaborate notes. Each of the seven categories contains an introduction about the specific theme of that section and how cats fit into that role in folklore. Further, every single one of the stories also has its own introduction, offering an interesting glimpse of the tale and its background. I love that these are placed right before the story, so we read each tale knowing its origin and history. The country/culture the story has been taken from is also mentioned clearly in this write-up. In a few cases, the introduction was so brilliant that I enjoyed it more than the story itself.

The book is peppered with some adorable B&W illustrations of cats doing catty stuff. 😻

As always, I rated the stories individually. Of the forty stories, twenty-two stories got four or more stars – an amazing performance! A major chunk of the remaining stories earned 3-3.5 stars. Some of these might have earned more had they not felt so dated. A few of the stories were already familiar to me due to my childhood habit of devouring fairytales and folklore, but it was nice to reread them after so long. I don’t want to list twenty-two stories here, so here are my top favourites with 4.5+ stars each:

😻 The Cat Who Came Indoors – Zimbabwean: Well, any story declaring women as the finest creature in the land has to be a favourite, isn't it? 🥳 - 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

😻 The Cat's Purr – Caribbean: This is the best Purr origin story, ever! - 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

😻 The White Cat – French: I do think the poor cat ended up on the losing side of the bargain, but it was a great cat story nonetheless. - 🌟🌟🌟🌟✨

😻 Kisa the Cat – Icelandic: This is supposedly a popular story but it was a new one for me. A nice magical story with one gruesome scene that's thankfully handled well. - 🌟🌟🌟🌟✨

😻 The Cat and the Mice – Tibetan: A good plan and preparedness never fail. - 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

😻 Dick Whittington and His Cat – English: One of my favourite stories from childhood. I think I read it when I was in grade five. It felt wonderful to revisit it after all these decades. - 🌟🌟🌟🌟✨

😻 The Nunda, Eater of People – Swahili: Some of these stories contain major spoilers in their titles. Luckily, the story itself was fascinating. - 🌟🌟🌟🌟✨

Overall, I enjoyed this collection despite my discomfort with some of the plot inclusions. The insightful preludes served to augment the value of the compilation. As the book says, we will never truly understand cats, the creatures with "two paws in our world, and two in a world of mystery." But these stories help us get that much closer to them.

Definitely recommended to every cat lover and fairytale/folktale enthusiast. This would be a great book for ages 8 and above. It would also make a fabulous gift during the festive season.

4.25 stars. (3.75 being the average of my ratings for each tale, + 0.5 stars for the excellent accompanying writeups.)

My thanks to Elliott & Thompson for providing the DRC of “The Cat's Tales: Feline Fairytales and Folklore” via NetGalley. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.