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    P.S. Your Cat Is Dead: A Novel
    P.S. Your Cat Is Dead: A Novel
    P.S. Your Cat Is Dead: A Novel
    Ebook230 pages3 hours

    P.S. Your Cat Is Dead: A Novel

    By James Kirkwood

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    It's New Year's Eve in New York City. Your best friend died in September, you've been robbed twice, your girlfriend is leaving you, you've lost your job...and the only one left to talk to is the gay burglar you've got tied up in the kitchen... P.S. your cat is dead.

    An instant classic upon its initial publication, P.S. Your Cat is Dead received widespread critical acclaim and near fanatical reader devotion. The stage version of the novel was equally successful and there are still over 200 new productions of it staged every year. Now, for the first time in a decade, James Kirkwood's much-loved black humor comic novel of manners and escalating disaster returns to bewitch and beguile a new generation.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateApr 1, 2007
    ISBN9781429976350
    P.S. Your Cat Is Dead: A Novel
    Author

    James Kirkwood

    James Kirkwood (1924-1989) was a prominent figure in the theater world as well as the author of several novels. He's best remembered as the co-author of the long-running musical A Chorus Line and for P.S. Your Cat is Dead.

    Read more from James Kirkwood

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    Reviews for P.S. Your Cat Is Dead

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    • 5/5
      That was a brilliant read! This reads like a well crafted play with great timing!
    • 5/5
      Jimmy Zoole is a none too successful actor in his late thirties, never having really made it. Then his best friend dies, he is burgled twice in succession, his girlfriend is leaving him, he loses his job in a leading role on Broadway and he has to vacate his flat . . . and his cat is dead. When on New Year’s Eve he catches the burglar making a third attempt in his flat maybe things are about to change. After a struggle he has the burglar tied up and secured minus his trousers over the kitchen sink. What to do with him now? They talk, he learns his name, Vito, he is something of a loser, and he swings both ways.A brilliant and bizarre story, two potential losers come together in extraordinary circumstances, maybe it marks a change for them both. It is beautifully written and very funny; the two appealing main characters are complete opposites yet manage to bond. They story becomes more absurd and equally more gripping by the minute; impossible to put the book down.
    • 4/5
      A delightful treat, this humorous novel had me laughing out loud at times. Yet there is a dark side to the story for the situation is one of those that is only funny from the outside looking in. Abandoned by his girlfriend on New Year's Eve, and still unaware that his beloved cat Tennessee (named after the playwright Tennessee Williams) has died in an animal clinic, hopeless New York actor Jimmy Zoole is feeling depressed and unstable when he happens across a cat burglar, Vito, in his apartment. Furious, he beats the stranger unconscious and ties him to his kitchen sink. Jimmy begins to torment his terrified captive; however, the unlikely pair soon establish a certain bond. Kirkwood adapted the novel, in a twist on the typical approach, from his play. I enjoyed both having seen the play performed locally in Chicago some years after reading the novel.
    • 4/5
      Such a clever, ironic, and at times funny book. It seems things couldn't get worse when his apartment is broken into. Oh, but they can. And such a weird ending! Loved it.
    • 5/5
      An absurd but completely engaging comedy. The storyline is so bizarre that I don't know how to write a review for it. Read the text on the cover ... if you find it intriguing, read the book. If the concept of a tying up a burglar and keeping him in your kitchen instead of calling the cops disturbs you ... stay away.

    Book preview

    P.S. Your Cat Is Dead - James Kirkwood

    ROBBERY I

    My home was a fine oddball top-floor (third) loft-turned-apartment on Cork Street, a block-long cul-de-sac in the West Village, an easy dog walk from the Hudson River dock area. This apartment, inherited from an actor friend upon his marriage to an older and much wealthier lady two years previously, was a cocoon, an oasis of sanity in the midst of New York, a city for whom my love affair was on the serious wane.

    One immense 40 x 36 room with brick walls and planked doors, plus a separate bathroom and two closets. The room was divided into three areas: a splendid kitchen with a free-standing butcher-block stainless-steel sink unit, built-in wall oven and cabinets; a sleeping area with a comfortable king-sized bed which could be screened off on two sides or not, as desired; and the main living area, sofa, easy chairs, rolltop desk, built-in bookshelves, stereo, and a working fireplace. Two small skylights, no more than two feet by two, broke up the expanse of the beamed ceiling, one over the bed, the other over the kitchen area.

    The rent: $126.00. A steal at twice that.

    On the evening of September 9, Kate and I returned to find the apartment thoroughly burglarized. The front wood door had been cut through, a hole punched out, and the lock slipped. The feelings upon being robbed I’d read about or heard from friends all applied. After the initial shock, a lockjaw rage at this invasion of privacy, more than distress at the loss of the articles in question: TV, stereo, typewriter, camera, a selection of clothes, cuff links, etc. A dirtying of my home, my place.

    After the police had been called, had come and gone with such ill-concealed boredom that one almost felt like apologizing for having been robbed, Kate and I managed to squeeze a laugh out of it.

    Pete Williams’ wife had just that day given me a large bunch of fresh dill wrapped in white paper. I had placed it, still in its wrapping, in a large glass of water on the butcher block. Kate, who would put dill on ice cream she loved it so, noticed its absence. Hmn, she said, maybe we should find out what Julia Child was doing this evening.

    Although insurance covered this first robbery, the investigator notified me I was hereby dropped—that year’s policy was up in seventeen days—because the building was now a bad risk. The bakery on the ground floor had gone out of business, the aging hippie couple who made jewelry on the second floor had moved to New Mexico. The building had been sold and there was a rumor it was to be torn down. There was no one living there but me; if I were not home, a burglar could have a field day, he could hammer and saw to his heart’s content, could even throw a hand grenade at my door and there would be no one to interfere.

    Kate went shopping with me for replacements and my Aunt Claire sent a check which helped make up the difference between the current price of the items in question and what I received from the insurance company.

    So I was robbed. Not too bad. Except for the nasty taste left by the experience itself. The apartment was no longer Safe Harbor; it had been violated. Whenever I went out I wondered if I would come home to find the door knocked in or ripped off. The hallways were eerie and not kept clean now that the building was empty except for me. Light bulbs by the stairs were not replaced unless I replaced them.

    PETE WILLIAMS

    Pete Williams was my closest and dearest friend. Bright, witty, talented, warm, feisty, and, even better, complex. He was rarely without surprise.

    We met in 1966 when he directed the pilot for a proposed TV soap (that never got on) and we hit it off immediately. We began going out on double dates, later went to the same gym together, and soon we saw or talked to each other every day. He was engaged to a lovely girl, Didi Morrow.

    One evening about three months into our friendship, after we’d taken our dates home, we stopped by a bar for a nightcap. We ended up having three or four and when we left and were walking down the street, Pete suddenly slipped his arm around my shoulder. He surprised me; there was extreme warmth and intimacy about the gesture. When I looked over at him, he grinned and said, That bother you?

    No ... I shrugged, trying to be as casual as possible.

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