Why You Want It:
With sixty-three poems ranging from dark to comic in tone, 12 watercolor paintings, and a full-color original cover, A Carnival of Cats will appeal to lovers of poetry and cats alike.
The cats in Dan Liberthson’s A Carnival of Cats are captivating, quirky individuals, referred to variously as miracles, enigmas, gods, spies, soul stealers, royals, cheating mistresses, freedom fighters, muses, and more. The poems tell stories not only of cats he has known and loved but also the lives of their humans, including himself. As Liberthson captures cats’ humanity and humans’ animality, the species often blur together. What cats mean to us and what we might mean to them are explored in poems both humorous and serious, in rhyming and free verse. If you are a cat lover, some of these poems are bound to haunt you, but you don’t have to be crazy about cats to love this book. – Dave Mehler, editor of Triggerfish Critical Review
In Dan Liberthson’s A Carnival of Cats, we get to know intimately all the cats he has known: past and present, house dwellers and strays. At times Dan’s imaginative poetic language, as he envisions what feline perceptions and thoughts might be like, seems to transform him into a cat himself. – Alice E. Rogoff, Editor of the Haight-Asbury Literary Journal
A Carnival of Cats is witty, profound, and as beautiful as a cat’s eyes. I enjoyed it immensely! – Nancy Etchemendy, award-winning novelist, poet, and author of the “Odd Company” Substack
How You Get it:
Order Paperback or eBook: Amazon
Or order from other major on-line book vendors. eBooks ordered from Google Books (Windows) or Apple Books (Apple) apps are audio-embedded, so you can both read the poems and listen to me read them.
What’s In It—Sample Poems and Paintings
Click on the link below to hear Dan read selections from A Carnival of Cats at a Dec. 16, 2025 poetry reading in the "Head for the Hills" series.
Another World
When a cat steals your soul,
hooks it subtly from your being
with piercing eyes that see
more than yours ever willits impenetrable psyche
carries that wriggling soul afar,
fairytale fish transported
beyond what you thought beyondto an inverse universe
where cat is king, you an underling.
It may carry your soul tenderly
like a kitten mouthed softly
or play with it like a mouse.If hungry, it might eat your quaking soul
(then you’d never come back)
but if well fed and only curious,
let the soul flee back into your being,
now open to a wider world.
Lost
My sweet black Nefertiti
killed by a car fifty years ago
still sat on our kitchen windowsill
every dinner time for weeks,
condensing from the dark
long enough to tear my heart
with one hooked claw,
then melt into the night.Now another cat's gone missing.
Posters on nearly every pole
(as if sheer repetition could force
an answer to at least one prayer)
promise a THOUSAND dollars
for your return, Tabitha. For you
there is still hope (the bait that keeps
love's teeth biting): your tabby body,
honey-colored and dark-striped,
has not been found. No bloody mess,
no ragged tufts on the mountain
torn out by raccoon or coyote.Some comfort there, but shrinking
as the nights grow longer
and still you are missing.
Oh, Cheshire cat, you suckle
on our yearning more greedily,
draw love's milk harder
and make the ache sharper
now only your smile remains.
Without corpus delicti
we can doubt your death but
cannot trust in your life.If only love could do
everything we need it to—
but it cannot conquer all,
not even its own illusions.
Why must you return,
half-ghost, to haunt our dreams
when, waking, Here kitty kitty
draws only a spectral purr
and the faint wind sometimes
we think we feel stirring
from your full tail's passage.
As in heaven, we cannot believe
yet cannot bear to disbelieve.
Bookstore Guardian
Tortoise-shell cat lies serene
on the bookstore’s counter
knowing all she needs to know
though she’s never read a book.She knows how to recognize love,
respond to a caress and nuzzle back
and she knows to flee danger—when the vandal smashed the window
she hid until he left, safe
behind boxes in the back.While the shopkeeper tells the tale
I stroke her cat and am rewarded
with a rumbling purr and a sly smileas she turns to bite my arm—not gently
but not hard enough to break the skin—
a cat’s way to say, Too much!Affection’s fine, but I’ve my own mind
so you’ll never win me completely—
enough’s enough; more, too much.
She turns away and smiles sweetly.
