Songs About Cats (or are they?)

Perhaps the most famous Cat Song is The Siamese Cat Song by Peggy Lee recorded. The song is from the 1955 Walt Disney classic “The Lady and the Tramp”, an animated film about a classy Cocker Spaniel named Lady who falls for Tramp a scamp of a mongrel. The song is about two arrogant cats, Si and I, who as Siamese cats have a bad reputation since.
The Siamese Cat Song was written by Lee along with Sonny Burke and over the years, also recorded by Freddie and The Dreamers, Mitch Miller, Dave Stewart and Barbara Gaskin, Haylie Duff, and Bobby McFerrin. “We are Siamese if you please, we are Siamese if you do not like.”
Both the Turtles and Petula Clark stepped into recording studios to very different versions of The Cat in the Window, a song that tries a cat from a window with the singer wanting to fly away to make comparison. “There is a cat in the window, and he watched the birds go over, he would like to fly out the window to go where the wind goes, and so would I.”
Who can forget the Muppets recording of the cat came back, a song about a kitten who find their way back kept straight, no matter how far she was taken home. “But the cat came back, she would be inevitable, she was sitting on the porch the very next day.”
In 1950, people were flooding into record stores and I Taw a Puddy Tawt demand action. Mel Blanc recorded the song, written by Alan Livingston, Billy May and Warren Foster, about the cartoon cat and canary Tweety and Sylvester Duo. “I tawt I TAW a Puddy Tat a creeping up on me, I had a TAW Puddy Tat as easy as it might be.”
The Rooftop Singers followed up the 1963 number one hit Walk Right In, with Tom Cat a ditty about ‘Ringtail Tom’ who go “strutting round the town” “And if he in front of all the other cats in the neighborhood, they begin to please shout. “Fast forward to 1981 and the Stray Cats record a musically different song but with a very similar theme, the rockabilly Stray Cat Strut.’s” Stray Cat Strut, I’m a ladies’ cat, a cat Casanova, Hey man, where it’s at, get a shoe to me from a mean old man threw my dinner from a garbage can. ”
Norma Tanega apparently in possession of a cat that they bear the name of ‘Dog’ and like that
cat for walks, so they met in 1966 Walking My Cat Named Dog, which does seem to be about their real life experience of strolling town with her pet cat.
Most songs, however, that the word cat in the tile are not really at all about cats. A good example is the beautiful song, Cats In The Cradle by Harry Chapin. No cats making an appearance in this song but the lyrics contain a very chilling message that every dad should note, too.
Bent Fabric, Bent Fabricius-real name Bjerre was a hit in 1962 with Alley Cat, but this was an instrumental recording so it is not a song about cats. Instrumental too was Aaron Copeland’s The Cat and the Mouse.
Cat People (Putting Out Fire) David Bowie from the 1982 remake of the movie Cat People was recorded. Very dark and ominous feel to the song but the words have no relationship to cats.
The cat in the cat crawled, was recorded by Mud actually a girl like the cat in The Rolling Stones “Stray Cat Blues featured, this time with very sharp talons.
They call it the cat that is by Elton John on well it is not about cats! Neither is Honky Cat, Elton different tune, that we live on a country to persuade young life in the city.
Three Cool Cats, is a song which was first taken up by the Coasters in 1958 and with the Beatles in 1962 (but not published until 1995.) Of course this song is not about cats, but about three teenage boys and three girls in her teens. The Beatles also recorded Little Willie John’s notice Leave My Kitten Alone, no surprise that the song not a kitten.
U2 a song titled An Cat Dubh, which apparently means The Black Cat in Irish, not a cat in the song but, black or otherwise.
No cats are in Year of the Cat by Al Stewart, Cat Scratch Fever by Ted Nugent, The Lovecats The Cure and Cool for Cats by Squeeze. Who can say what The Cat’s In the Well by Bob Dylan is about?
It must be countless other songs that have the words cat or cats in the title but not really about our feline friends. No doubt there are more songs that are about cats than those listed on this page but these songs seem unfortunately few and far between.
But wait. . . was not there, a musical about cats. Cats, the musical by
Andrew Lloyd Webber, was first shown in London, England in 1981. Based on T.
S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats the show features song after about. . . Old Gumbie, Grizabella, Mungojerrie And Rumpelteazer, Skimbleshanks, Old Deuteronomy, Gus, Macavity, and Mr. Mistoffelees. All these characters are, of course. . . Cats.