Catfantastic II

Catfantastic

by Andre Norton (co-editor), Martin H. Greenberg (co-editor)

Offers a collection of cat tales, including the stories of Bomber, who seeks revenge on the German battleship Bismarck, and Bat and Punkin, who patiently seek the only humans worthy of them

Genres: Fantasy, Short Stories, Anthologies, Fiction, Cats, Animals, Science Fiction Fantasy

320 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 2, 1991

About the author

Andre Norton, born Alice Mary Norton, was a pioneering American author of science fiction and fantasy, widely regarded as the Grande Dame of those genres. She also wrote historical and contemporary fiction, publishing under the pen names Andre Alice Norton, Andrew North, and Allen Weston. She launched her career in 1934 with The Prince Commands, adopting the name “Andre” to appeal to a male readership. After working for the Cleveland Library System and the Library of Congress, she began publishing science fiction under “Andrew North” and fantasy under her own name. She became a full-time writer in 1958 and was known for her prolific output, including Star Man’s Son, 2250 A.D. and Witch World, the latter spawning a long-running series and shared universe. Norton was a founding member of the Swordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America and authored Quag Keep, the first novel based on the Dungeons & Dragons game. She influenced generations of writers, including Lois McMaster Bujold and Mercedes Lackey. Among her many honors were being the first woman named Gandalf Grand Master of Fantasy and SFWA Grand Master. In her later years, she established the High Hallack Library to support research in genre fiction. Her legacy continues with the Andre Norton Award for young adult science fiction and fantasy.

Reviews

[Jen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is another one of the purge-so-Jen's-bookcase-won't-collapse-on-her re-reads. I will go into each story a little so I remember them so I won't need to pick up this book again. The star rating will be the average of the stars given to each story, divided by the total number of stories, same as with the first book.

Bomber and the Bismarck by Clare Bell-this one was COOL because of HISTORY. The author cleverly took a true story from WWII about the Bismarck and how it was damaged in neigh impossible odds so it could be finished off by the British Navy and added a cat to it. Absolutely brilliant. I looked it up and the story matches Wiki, lol. 4 solid stars, though I am sorry for the real deaths involved in the battle.

A Puma and a Panther by Wilanne Schneider Belden. So cute! I love the POV, both a little from Bat and the rest from an omniscient narrator. The Jack-o-Lanterns and the two cats, Bat and Punkin were TOO CUTE. I would love to see how the children grow up and what they become. 4, looking to see what else this writer has published, stars!

The Last Gift by Elizabeth H Boyer. Interesting creation story of cats. Didn't do much for me and I skipped to the end. Moral of the story, if a god offers you milk, DRINK IT, lol. 2.5 stars.

Papercut Luck by Patricia B Cirone. Short, but gets the point across. Grandmother Gao was a B*TCH, I wanted to smack her! Ling Mei was a sweetie and I'm glad she got her family back. 3.5 stars.

Shado by Marylois Dunn. Connect to the story "Yellow Eyes" in Catfanastic I. I liked this one better. 3.5 stars.

In Bastet's Service by P.M. Griffin. 5 stars, all the way. Rehab for abused kitties. There is a special circle in hell for those who abuse animals and other humans. Just saying.

Shadows by Caralyn Inks. I liked the world the story takes place in, the characters in it felt well developed and I really liked the relationship between the cat in this story and her human. I wonder if this is part of a bigger story? Need to check. 4 solid stars.

The Execution by A.R. Major. Meh. Not amazing, not bad. I didn't like how the dog didn't get a fair trial. They just believed what they were told. 2.5 stars.

Hermione at Moon House by Ardath Mayhar. Boooooriiiiiing. 2 stars.

Quest of Souls by Ann Miller and Karen Rigley. UGH, the boy is TSTL. DNF and zero stars.

Ede's Earrings by Sasha Miller. For a magician, he sure is an idiot. 1 star.

Clara's Cat by Elizabeth Moon. Ugh. I hate being in the head of a nasty character. And this one was pretty nasty. Skimmed to the obvious end. WARNING: elder abuse and murder, from a "family" member who only wanted the $$. 2 stars, because the head is realistic, you just don't want to stay there.

Hob's Pot by Andre Norton. Meh. Skimmed through it. It just didn't grab me. 2, I expected and hoped for more, stars.

The Queen's Cat Tale by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough, I have a confession to make. I don't like Arthurian legend. As such, this story did nothing for me. 2, not poorly written but not my bag, stars.

The Keep-Shape Spell by Mary H. Schaub. 5 stars. Scary how people with destruction on their minds can take something innocent and use it for evil. This is definitely one of the better stories in this volume.

Of Age and Wisdom by Roger C. Schlobin. Meh. Didn't do a thing for me. 1.5, the dragon thing was kind of cool but not a lot was explained, stars.

Critical Cats by Susan Schwartz. 4, the story should come with a warning to read with tissues, stars.

In Carnation by Nancy Springer. 3, eeeehhhh....I need a LITTLE more to get into it, stars.

All told, the stories averaged to 2.86 stars, so rounding up to 3 stars. Granted, I had to put the book down for a while, because it was just one big blah after another, but that could have been a mini-reading slump and not the book's fault.

Only one more book in this series that I own and then on to other anthologies to re-read, yay.

[Michelle Swanson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just like the first book some stories were better then others, the last story was the worst to me.

Maybe not as good as the first catfantastic but still enjoyable and worth the read.
You dont need to read these in sequence as none of the stories are continuations that ive found yet.

[Karolinde (Kari) · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's been a while since I read this collection, but there are still stories from it that I remember vividly. There are so many incredible selections to read by some very powerful writers.

[Colleen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Obviously, magic and fantasy aren't my thing. It seems everyone still finds a favourite in this cat anthology. Mine is No. 1, "Bomber and the Bismarck" by Clare Bell. Needless to say, after really enjoying the very first story, the rest paled by comparison. It didn't help that my dog is very ill and most likely on his last leg. I'm a practical, down-to-earth, no bullshit dog lover.

[Thistle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quick synopsis : 18 stories about cats.

Brief opinion : The good stories were really really good, the bad stories were awful, the ones in the middle were a slog.

Plot : Each story one by one:

Bomber and the Bismarck by Clare Bell. Clare Bell is an author I usually like a lot, but this story was set on an old British WW2 ship that was fighting a Nazi sub and I'm just not interested in that period of history. Plot followed a normal-appearing but magical cat who could open portals in walls. He opened one from the British ship to the Nazi sub. DNF. ⭐️⭐️ - Disliked

A Puma and a Panther by Wilanne Schneider Belden. A simple but cute story. Two magical cats adopt two children, and the parents slowly come to realize what the cats really are. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ - Liked

The Last Gift by Elizabeth H. Boyer. What a fun, well written story! Set in Viking times, a man pledges his firstborn child to a Jotun, so when she turns 16 she goes to his halls. He realizes she's lonely spending all her time there alone, so creates the cat species for her (and for all women in the future). ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️- Loved

Papercut Luck by Patricia B. Cirone. A very short, simple story. A magical cat can make portals in walls (just like in Bomber and the Bismarck) and helps a girl save her family. The cat came alive from a "papercut", though I'm not sure what that is. It seemed to be described as origami, but maybe just cut paper? ⭐️⭐️⭐️ - Okay

Shado by Marylois Dunn. A "talking animal" story, but didn't really work for me. A male cat (simply named Cat) and a female fox work together to save some kittens. ⭐️⭐️ ½ - Disliked

In Bastet's Service by P. M. Griffin. I loved (LOVED) the first half of this story, but the other half didn't work so well for me. The story opened in the afterlife, the spirit of a very abused cat arriving before Bastet. He had eight more lives ahead of him, but because of the abuse in his first one, he didn't want to trust humans again. Bastet found a woman who could help him and sent him back to his second life with her. (I LOVED the story up until this point.) Unfortunately then a serial killer arrived on the scene, Bastet helped the woman kill him, and things spiraled downhill from there. I wish the story had ended with the cat coming to trust the woman. The whole serial killer thing was completely unbelievable. "Loved" and "hated" averages out to: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ - Okay

Shadows by Caralyn Inks. Though well written, this story felt like it was set in a larger book series. I felt like I was missing a lot of context by not having read the larger work. DNF. ⭐️⭐️ - Disliked

The Execution by A. R. Major. Cats as human kings. Gave up on it early -- I like my cats as cats, not as stand-ins for humans. ⭐️ - Hated.

Hermione at Moon House by Ardath Mayhar. The writing was too hard to get through. It was written in some fictionalized form of Old English? Words were Randomly Capitalized and it Was too Hard to Read The Story like That. ⭐️ - Hated

Quest of Souls by Ann Miller and Karen Rigley. Not a bad story but it felt like it was written for very, very young readers (pre-MG). A cat and a young boy go on adventures to save the souls of the lord, lady, and cook of the castle they live in. ⭐️⭐️⭐️ ½ - Okay

Ede's Earrings by Sasha Miller. I HATED this story (though maybe it was a product of its time?). A young, arrogant wizard just happened to get one of the best magical companions (cat) in the world. One day he meets the most beautiful woman on the planet, who instantly seems to fell in love with him. The cat did everything she could to warn the wizard, but he wrote it off as her being jealous. I was sure the story would be that the woman was evil and the cat was right to warn him, but it was actually that she was jealous! Both of the woman wanted this waste of space, arrogant, disrespectful man to the point where they fought each other and the cat tricked the beautiful woman with changing places with her (the cat becoming a woman, the woman becoming a cat), and the cat-turned-woman fawned endlessly over her man. This story actually made me angry! ⭐️ - Hated.

Clara's Cat by Elizabeth Moon. Another story I hated, though it was neither the story's nor the author's fault. A horrible young woman (arrogant and disrespectful, like a female version of the wizard in the previous story), went to live with her elderly aunt to "take care of her" (pretend to, so she could get the aunt's house after she killed her). It was just such an unpleasant thing to spend my reading time with this awful character. Cats didn't even come into the story until the last pages. ⭐️ - Hated

Hob's Pot by Andre Norton. There was something off about the writing in this one for me, I kept stumbling over how the sentences were structured. The story (about a cat guarding a family against an evil pot... or a demon in a pot?) just didn't keep my attention. DNF. ⭐️⭐️ - Disliked

The Queen's Cat's Tale by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough. Since this ebook is a scan of a physical book, it's all one big chapter. That means when I want to DNF a story, I make the font size one and tap through the pages until I come to the next story. Oops, somehow I scrolled by this one. Other reviews say it's set in King Arthur's Court and I'm not too interested in that, so I'm not going to try to find this story again to read it.

The Keep-Shape Spell by Mary H. Schaub. So cute! I wish it had been a longer story. A cat gets turned into a boy by mistake, and soon enough he helps defend the wizard he lives with from an intruder. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️- Loved

Of Age and Wisdom by Roger C. Schlobin. Right from the first words, this one didn't work for me. Set in a time before humans existed, when it was only cats and dragons-- but how could there be domestic cats before there were humans? My brain balked at that issue, DNFed almost immediately so no star rating. Probably my own issue, not being able to turn my brain off about that.

Critical Cats by Susan Shwartz. Holy crap, this story was so good. Easily the best story in this book, maybe the best cat story I've ever read. Set in a vet's office, a dying cat helps an orphaned and abused cat (Puff) to find his place in the world. The whole cat "culture" was so perfect! Cat society, their roles, how cut off from it Puff was because he was taken from his mother just days after birth. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️- Loved! All the stars and more!

In Carnation by Nancy Springer. A cat returns to life for her final, ninth, life and immediately turns into a woman, becomes a stripper, and tries to sleep with random men. I was "WTF?" through the first half of this story, and barely skimmed the second half. Turns out she was a Norse god? But why would she have nine lives then? I didn't care enough to read and find out. ⭐️ - Hated

Writing/editing : Writing varied though was generally good. The editing in some stories was rough. Because this book was published in 1991, the ebook is a scan and so there were a lot of formatting issues and some typos introduced through scanning. It was generally readable, though every other paragraph the margins changed by a lot.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like : I enjoyed this anthology a lot better than other ones I have read recently. Even for the stories I didn't like, I only DNFed a couple of them. And the ones that were good were really great!

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved : Averaging the stars for each story comes out to 2.38, but I didn't dislike this book, so rounding up to: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ - Okay.

[Charlie · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is always difficult to review a collection of short stories, especially a multi-author collection. I could comment on its adherence to theme, but, in this case, the theme is specific enough that all of the stories fit. In quality there were ups and downs according to personal preference. For me, there were more ups than downs and I found no story so bad as to be unreadable. I might even go as far as to say that, for people not interested in shotgunning a bunch of stories about cats, many of these stories could be enjoyably read independently. If you are into reading books about cats, this one is pretty darn good.

[KJ Vogel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some of the stories in here are absolute gems, but the majority of them are so, so godawful and just insert cats who generally aren't very cat-like into paint by numbers fantasy. I also learned a lot about some of the authors' weird hangups and unfortunate beliefs, which again, hella weird when it's a book where cats are supposed to be major characters in each story.

[Vickyb · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book of fantasty short stories about cats.
My favorite so far of the 5 or 6 Catfantastic books out there. Best story in this book is about the Goddess Bast.

[Cindy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Multi author anthology of cat inspired stories - multiple genres.

[Terri · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyed almost all the stories in this collection...interesting points of view.

[Kerie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fuzzy, heart warming stories about anthropomorphized cats. If you like that sort of thing.

[Jewell Moreno · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great selection of stories,,no science fiction,,,just fantasy. Thoroughly enjoyed several of them.

[Jamie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh my gosh, Kitties! <3
Ahem, an enjoyable collection of fantasy, horror, and science fiction short stories that feature cats. Some are better than others but I enjoyed all of them. Here is a mini-review of the stories:
The Gate Of The Kittens: A horror/fantasy story that I had trouble following at times and I felt the army storyline wasn’t brought to an adequate conclusion. Good but could have used another page or two.
The Damcat: A story about a dam that has an American Indian curse and one Indian’s attempt to stop it with the help of his pet bobcat. Good, but the story takes a while to get going. Should have started later into the story.
Borrowing Trouble: A useless wizard apprentice saves his teacher with the help of his familiar. This one was fun.
Day Of Discovery: A story about teleportation and animals that look like cats but actually creatures from another dimension.
Wart: A cat tries to save his human master’s life aboard a spaceship. Told from the cat’s perspective.
Yellow Eyes: A cat and a dog team up to help a traveller who rides a dragon.
It Must Be Some Place: A wizard’s apprentice goes to a magical land to retrieve one of his master’s socks, that was lost in the wash.
The Dreaming Kind: A cat is tormented by non-corporeal creatures created by an experiment gone awry.
Trouble: A little girl takes her cat and runs away with him. She meets a nice older man and she tells him about her and her cat’s life up to that point.
SKitty: An astronaut and his genetically engineered ship’s cat impress the rulers of a far-off planet.
The Game of cat and rabbit: On the way to a fat-off planet, A cat tries to save his human master’s life.
From The Diary Of Hermione: A familiar recounts the failings of her human wizard.
It’s A Bird, it’s A Plane, it’s … Supercat: An alien zoo keeper recruits a human and her cat to help him track down a bird from a foreign planet that has made it to Earth.
Noble Warrior: A young girl is given a large cat to protect her.
Bastet’s blessing: A story about an Egyptologist and her assistant, a cat.

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow more fantastic stories to thrill the fans of cats and fantasy, stories that continue from the first book to those you would never expect from writers who have a great sense of humor and are able to tell stories that will make you laugh and cry and cheer the characters on in the adventures you’ve got to read to be able to understand our place in our cats lives and wonder at how beautifully we have adapted to their world.

[Jennifer · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked this up at the Free Little Library in my neighborhood because the whole idea (and the amazing cover) made me laugh. Some of the stories are absolutely terrible, but some are honestly pretty fun. The ratio is at about 2/5, but I will say that I enjoyed that 2/5 much more than I expected. Keep on being you Catfantastic!

[Anita Patel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Felines and Fantasy = 2 of my favorite things!! Love this series!

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of the stories were great others not so most enjoyable

[Roben · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a wonderful collection of fantastical cat stories!

[S Talaro · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book over 10 years ago and picked it up again. Like the first time, it captured my attention and I couldn't put it down. A definite addition to my personal library.

[Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall mildly entertaining but more mediocre or bad stories than good.

[bluetyson]

Catfantastic 2 (Daw Book Collectors) (1991)

[Priscilla Sage · Rating 5 out of 5]

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