Songs of the Cat was released by Highbridge Audio in 1991. It is a collection of songs and spoken-word pieces about cats, performed by Garrison Keillor and Frederica von Stade. Other than the traditional The Cat Came Back, the selections were written by Keillor; some are entirely original, and some are recognizable as parodies set to other folk music or even to classical music.
The lyrics of one song, "Cat, You Better Come Back", were later illustrated and republished as a children's book with the same title.
Famous quotes containing the words songs of the, songs of, songs and/or cat:
“When we were at school we were taught to sing the songs of the Europeans. How many of us were taught the songs of the Wanyamwezi or of the Wahehe? Many of us have learnt to dance the rumba, or the cha cha, to rock and roll and to twist and even to dance the waltz and foxtrot. But how many of us can dance, or have even heard of the gombe sugu, the mangala, nyang’umumi, kiduo, or lele mama?”
—Julius K. Nyerere (b. 1922)
“On a cloud I saw a child,
And he laughing said to me,
“Pipe a song about a Lamb”;
So I piped with merry chear.
“Piper pipe that song again”—
So I piped, he wept to hear.
“Drop thy pipe thy happy pipe
Sing thy songs of happy chear”;
So I sung the same again
While he wept with joy to hear.”
—William Blake (1757–1827)
“O women, kneeling by your altar-rails long hence,
When songs I wove for my beloved hide the prayer,
And smoke from this dead heart drifts through the violet air
And covers away the smoke of myrrh and frankincense;
Bend down and pray for all that sin I wove in song....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“I’m like Cat here. We’re a couple of no-name slobs. We belong to nobody and nobody belongs to us. We don’t even belong to each other.”
—George Axelrod (b. 1922)