For T.S. Eliot, cats were a source of endless wonder and mystery. He owned many cats in his lifetime and gave them weird and lovely names such as Pettipaws. The poet’s sentimentality towards cats seems on par with his aloof and shy public persona, though perhaps at odds with the bleak, cynical verse of his early career. However, for Eliot cats represented kindred spirits with their gifts for independence, stealth, and trickery. The very name of the book in which “Mr. Mistoffelees” appears is a reference to a nickname given to Eliot by his mentor: Ezra Pound called Eliot “Old Possum.” (Eliot returned the compliment by calling Pound “Brer Rabbit”).

The poems were composed during the 1930s for Eliot’s godchildren and the children of Eliot’s friends. By this time, Eliot was in his late forties and had undergone profound changes in his personal life and political views. He was settled in England, converted to Anglicanism, and open to exploring more religious themes in his poems. After his conversion, his poems frequently reference themes from Christianity, displaying greater optimism and hope than the gloomier poems of his early career. Since the late 1920s, his poems—which always held an easy musicality, despite the somber concerns of his early oeuvre—were increasingly lyrical and song-like.