Two drops this month reference the same source material. Julia Sardó Portabella dropped Growltiger's Last Stand as a Micro Wallet on July 7. She's back on July 24 with Song of the Jellicles as a Slim Wallet. Both poems come out of the same 1939 T.S. Eliot book: Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats.
This is the story behind the source, why it matters, and why we chose to build a two-drop arc around a 90-year-old poetry collection about cats.
The Book Itself
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats is short. Fourteen poems, maybe 100 pages depending on the edition. T.S. Eliot wrote it in the 1930s for his godchildren under the pen name "Old Possum" (the nickname his friend Ezra Pound gave him). The poems came out originally as private letters, then got collected and published by Faber and Faber in 1939.
This is the same T.S. Eliot who wrote The Waste Land, one of the most anthologized poems in the English language. Same Eliot who wrote The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Same Eliot who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948. Old Possum was his side project. Written for kids, released as a small book, and taken lightly by most of his readers at the time.
Then Andrew Lloyd Webber turned it into Cats in 1981 and the source material got recontextualized entirely. Suddenly Old Possum's was famous for being the poem book that became one of the longest-running musicals in Broadway history. The literary origin got flattened by the musical.
What's Actually in the Book
The poems introduce different cat characters. Each cat gets its own poem, and each poem is written in a different meter and mood to match the personality of the cat. The book has range. Some poems are light and rhyming and clearly aimed at kids. Others are darker and more literary and clearly aimed at adults reading over kids' shoulders.
The famous ones (Mr. Mistoffelees, Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat, Old Deuteronomy, The Old Gumbie Cat, Macavity the Mystery Cat) all became major musical numbers. But some of the poems didn't make it into the musical intact. Growltiger's Last Stand is one of those. Too dark. The Song of the Jellicles made it in but got restructured.
Growltiger's Last Stand
The pirate cat poem. Growltiger is described as a scarred, one-eyed cat pirate who terrorizes the Thames from a barge. His rival is a Siamese cat named Gilbert. One night Growltiger and his girlfriend Griddlebone are on the barge and the Siamese ambush him. Growltiger gets thrown overboard and drowns.
Written in a mock-heroic style, almost like Gilbert and Sullivan wrote an opera libretto. It's funny and violent and slightly xenophobic (the Siamese cats are racial caricatures by 1930s standards, which is one reason it got cut from Cats). It's also one of the more memorable poems in the book because of the dramatic arc.
Julia Sardó Portabella's Micro Wallet from July 7 pulls from this poem. Pirate imagery, barge on a river, moody atmospheric composition. Not a sanitized version. The pirate cat with the story.
The Song of the Jellicles
Completely different mood. Jellicles are a specific breed of cat in the Old Possum universe: black and white cats who gather at night for a special dance called the Jellicle Ball. The poem is about them coming out at midnight, waiting for the moon, dancing, and going home before dawn.
It's atmospheric, magical, and quiet. Where Growltiger is violence and drama, Song of the Jellicles is ritual and moon. Same book, opposite poles.
The Jellicle Ball is the centerpiece of the Cats musical. If you've seen the show or the 2019 movie, you know the imagery: cats gathering in a junkyard at midnight, dancing, choosing one cat to ascend to the Heaviside Layer (whatever that means). The source poem is quieter than the musical version, but the atmospheric core is the same.
Julia's July 24 Slim Wallet drop pulls from this poem. Midnight color palette, ritual imagery, the specific magic of cats gathering under a moon.
Why We Built a Two-Drop Arc Around These
Two reasons.
The first is aesthetic. Growltiger and Song of the Jellicles are the two most visually distinct poems in the book. Pirate versus ritual. River versus moon. Violence versus magic. Julia's decision to pair them as a Paperwallet drop meant we could offer two completely different moods from the same source, which is a stronger set than two similar designs would be.
The second is audience. Literary fans and Cats musical fans overlap partially but not completely. Some people who love T.S. Eliot's poetry hate the musical. Some people who love the musical have never opened the source book. Doing two drops from Old Possum's serves both audiences without forcing anyone to pick a side.
Who These Wallets Are For
English majors and English major dropouts. The people who took a seminar on modernism in college and still think about it. The Waste Land is on your shelf but you also have the Faber pocket edition of Old Possum's.
Cats musical fans, from every era. The original Broadway run, the movie, the recent revival tours. Whether the show is your favorite thing or your guilty pleasure, both wallets fit.
Literary streetwear collectors. The small but real category of people who buy limited-edition Penguin covers, McSweeney's issues, and any accessory that treats books as source material for design.
Julia Sardó Portabella followers. Her illustration work has its own audience, and this two-drop arc is the strongest showcase of her range this year.
What's Still Available
Growltiger's Last Stand is live in the Micro Wallet collection right now (assuming inventory).
Song of the Jellicles drops July 24 in the Slim Wallet collection. Set your calendar.
Both are limited edition. Once each sells through, they don't come back. If you want the pair, grab Growltiger while it's still in stock and set a reminder for the 24th. Browse the full collection for other current drops.
