Particularly Cats-- and Rufus

Novelist Lessing describes the changing role cats have played in her life. As a child on a large Southern Rhodesian farm, Lessing's relationship with cats was cruelly efficient. Wild cats were shot; kittens were drowned. It was not until twenty-five years later that Lessing allowed cats to become companions. At first stilted (she called her initial felines Grey Cat and Black Cat), she seems a true convert by the time battle-worn Rufus enters her life.