William S. Burroughs turns, improbably and perfectly, to cats.

The Cat Inside is a short book about animals, dreams, memory, death, affection, possession, and the psychic contracts humans make with the creatures who tolerate them. It is not “Burroughs goes cute”; the sweetness here is still edged with hauntings, missing cats, old crimes, telepathy and dream logic.

Originally published in a limited illustrated edition in 1986, this later Viking/Penguin edition brings together Burroughs’ cat writing with a clean, spare design and Brion Gysin illustrations. A literary oddity, Beat-adjacent, animal metaphysics, it's for readers of Burroughs, cult American literature, artists’ books, cat people with unusual tolerance for existential weather.

Rare. Viking / Penguin Books hardback edition, first edition thus, first published in this edition in 1992. Fourth printing. Originally published in a limited edition of 133 copies by The Grenfell Press in 1986, with illustrations by Brion Gysin. Good second-hand condition, with light shelfwear to boards, mild rubbing and bumping to edges and corners, and light age-toning to pages. Binding sound.