The Cat Inside

Leave it to William S. Burroughs to make a book about the cats he loved so deeply something depressing, disturbing, and gross. Here, using the cut-up style he pioneered, is The Cat Inside, distilled from 94 pages to its essence in 94 words:

Reek of boiling sewage, coal gas and burning plastics, copraphagic perversions, like human fetus, eyes on stalks and needle teeth, nuclear winter skunk cat squirting venom like claws in the heart, the stricken animal, sad shrinking face, sad as a boat of dead leaves, bleeding desperate doomed planet, gouge the eyes, suck the blood, break a back with one shake. The dying monkey, half-formed mutant creature, filthy fawning shit-eating carrion-rolling in cold city alleys, hope withering in hot noon, grief without witness, plaintive voice torn to pieces said ‘take him outside, because he stinks.”