Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats – on which the musical CATS is based – was written by T S Eliot during the 1930’s and first published in 1939 by Faber and Faber. Although Eliot generally intended his cat poems to be for children, they were also appealing and amusing to adults.

With a little adaptation Andrew Lloyd Webber used Eliot’s poems as lyrics and set them to music to create the musical CATS. The inclusion of elements of Rhapsody on a Windy Night and some of Eliot’s unpublished writings enabled the character of Grizabella the glamour cat to be used and so a storyline emerged that formed a shape for the poems and a basis for a musical.