This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library.

Gabi Abrão's Notes on Shapeshifting can be purchased here.

In a meditation class in high school, our teacher told us to pick our place. This teacher, who did past life regression on dogs and had created a secret holistic elective under the guise of what she told her superiors would be a course on "the history of alternative medicine," said to us, "Pick a place to be in. Just sit there and listen. Make room for visits from animals, insects, spirits."

- Gabi Abrão, Notes on Shapeshifting

This is the place to be in. Take a deep breath, and make room for a visit from a cat.

In this week's podcast, The Meow Library has translated passages from Gabi Abrão's bestselling poetry collection into cat language. After noticing that cats seemed inexorably drawn to copies of the book (a phenomenon experimentally verified by Abrão via a Discord post), we solicited field recordings of their vocalizations and assembled them, with the help of a professional narrator, into this 30-minute compendium of feline resonances found within the text.

For more, visit Gabi and The Meow Library on Instagram:

Gabi Abrão: @sighswoon

The Meow Library: @meowliterature

Today's podcast covers Stranger Things actress-turned-literary wunderkind Millie Bobby Brown's breathtakingly ghostwritten Nineteen Steps, which is being unfairly panned as an exploitative, juvenile cash-in. Find out why it's anything but in this eloquent, 3000-word apologia, ghostwritten by my cat.

This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library: https://meowlibrary.com

This exclusive interview is a presentation of The Meow Library.

“. . .but in any case the selfimmolatory tendencies of cats does seem to be a known factor in the feline equation. Noted in the writings of Asclepius, among others of the ancients.

Jesus, said Seals.

It would seem to contradict Unamuno, though. Right, Squire? His dictum that cats reason more than they weep? Of course, their very existence according to Rilke is wholly hypothetical.

Cats?

Cats.”

-- Cormac McCarthy, The Passenger

In the low-hanging twilight, when the horizon was stained with an eerie hue of ashen gray, the splay-legged tabby known as Cormac McCarthy took his final faltering steps. His once agile frame, now burdened by the relentless passage of time, moved with a solemnity of ancient timbers. Shadows danced upon his frail silhouette, elongating the lines of age etched beneath his mange-stricken eyes, gray and pink underskin like the cracked parchments of forgotten manuscripts.

Those sooted emeralds, once fierce and piercing, now glimmered with a dim light, as if struggling to maintain their brilliance against the encroaching darkness. The fire of life within them whispered its last plea, a desperate attempt to hold onto a world that had grown weary and desolate.

Cormac, a creature forged in a realm of solitude and quiet contemplation, traversed the dire sands of his own existence, each step a measured cadence resonating with the weight of countless untold tales and unfulfilled desires. The very air seemed to hang heavy, laden with the mournful sighs of countless souls who had passed before him.

As he made his way to a secluded alcove, sheltered from the merciless winds that whispered their cruel laments, the shrill of absence enfolded him. The rasp of flame-kissed straw and the distant echo of a howling wind played their melancholy symphony, accompanying Cormac on his final pilgrimage.

In that sacred space, amidst the fading light, Cormac lay his weary body upon the cool earth. The world around him hushed, as if nature herself held her breath in reverence for this solemn departure. The final rays of the sun caressed his fur, painting him in a gentle golden hue, a testament to the untamed spirit that once roamed these lands.

The silence deepened, the stillness grew, as Cormac's heart, that delicate metronome of life, stuttered and sputtered. His ragged breaths purred their final tale, dissipating into the vast expanse of eternity. And in that quietude, the soul of a nomadic philosopher, a wanderer of realms unseen, was unshackled from its earthly vessel.

The world mourned its loss, though it knew not of the passing. No grand elegy would be written, no chorus of mourners would sing in lament. But in the hearts of those who had known him, who had witnessed the enigmatic dance of his existence, a void was left. A void that could only be filled by the echoes of his meows, the faint whispers of his stories, forever woven into the fabric of time.

Thus, Cormac McCarthy, the feline sage who prowled the alleys of our mortal coil, departed from this realm, transcending the boundaries of flesh and bone. His tale, now complete, would forever linger in the forgotten corners of the human heart, a testament to the enduring power of a single, idiot life.

Cormac McCarthy was my cat, and these are his final words.