What is it like for a cat to observe and live with humans? How does a cat experience human beings in their various modes of existence, from early sedentary societies at the dawn of civilization to the throes of empire in ancient Rome or Victorian England, or in cultures that seem dark and mysterious to us now, such as the medieval witch-hunts or Egypt in the period when felines were worshipped? With its wise, wily, and wonderfully perceptive protagonist-the cat who ceaselessly adapts himself, changing his voice, demeanor, and ideals according to the temper of the times-this novel is a brief history of human civilization as much as it is a history of feline evolution. The cat is the most fascinating of human companions because it opens up a surreal window into the human soul. The protagonist of this crafty, seductive, mesmerizing novel convinces you that there are many more windows into understanding the nature of our own perception-via the cat's all-knowing gaze-than we ever realized. What we think of as history is often reduced to stale chronology and progressive linearity; but the cat in this novel provides a profoundly circular, unknowable, mysterious dimension to the idea of human history.