Fritz Leiber 13 min read

They are the aliens among us, stranger than any extraterrestrial, and the cat Gummitch peers thoughtfully at the mirror-cat staring up from his little bowl of water.

Fritz Leiber's 1961 story, one of his beloved Gummitch cat tales, spins wry first-contact whimsy from a kitten's inner life. Charming, clever, delightful golden-age SF. Read it for a witty, affectionate story that takes seriously the strange genius of the household cat.

In its time

Published in 1961, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

13 min read (a short story, a single idea, delivered and gone).

Illustrated by

Dick Francis