Flying Lady With Cat

Flying Lady with Cat is the exuberant, colourful creation of Madhuri Z K Akin, an expat Californian who has lived in the Pennines since 2012. Cat poems from her whole life are paired with drawings and paintings in this A-4 hardback coffee table book of 112 pages.

Madhuri, born in 1952, is an experienced performance poet – she began in coffeehouses at age 16 – and this ease with the expostulatory comes through in her frank, accessible verse. She has had a well-travelled life, and we meet cats from many countries – including an angry leopard in the Himalayan foothills!

Madhuri’s background in meditation also comes through in the confidence and sensitivity of the poems, and in the often brashly colourful artwork. She tells it like it is, and since this book is about cats, we’ve got grace, fur, teeth and tails all parading happily across the pages.

A joy for cat-lovers everywhere.

Hardback on lulu.com

Some reviews of Flying Lady with Cat

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The life-rich experience throughout her poems, and the way it is articulated, I find comparable to D.H. Lawrence, a comparison which I have no idea whether she enjoys or resents. She hasn’t got back to me on that one! Certainly, in many ways I find her superior to Lawrence, with a far greater range. This is demonstrated in her humour which is often unexpected, real laugh-out loud stuff, and can be conveyed in paintings such as Dull Man Graced by Cat, a description of a cat’s inappropriate third eye (its arsehole) or the poignant – even tragic – humour of a lonely cat on heat.

The humour has great depth to it. The light-hearted title, The Son of Man is a Poor Benighted Idiot, while the Son of Tomcat is Pretty Smart, depicts in a few succinct stanzas the insanity of man’s attitude to nature. FB Does Some Good goes even further. Tomcat Handyman Blues, showing even more how great her range is, has one tapping one’s foot with the rhythm alone. And she must have a close relationship with the blues because, despite being set in England, the ballad Two Cats Up on the Moors tells a story redolent of the southern States, with one of the cats in question known as Fats Domino.

Inevitably with an artist such as Madhuri, the sense conveyed is of something Beyond. Whether through ecological and ethical concerns, wry humour as in a city bus with a bicycle on its front grille becoming a tiger with a kitten in its mouth, or ultimately the gift of meditation from our Zen-like companions, it is due to her skills as an artist and writer that we are left with Mystery.

Certainly there is much here for cat-lovers to enjoy, but ultimately it is for anyone who knows how to live, love – and laugh!

You can read the full review at Osho News.

S D Anugyan

There is something special for us book-loving types as we hold a brand-new, hardcover, profusely illustrated coffee-table book in our sweaty paws.

That is my delight in this moment as I leaf through Madhuri’s latest creation, “Flying Lady with Cat.” It’s a cat book; loaded with cat poems, cat drawings, cat lovers. If you don’t love cats, chances are this is not for you.

Throughout the book we are graced by the author’s original drawings which highlight the various moods and seasons. The drawings augment these atypical kitty poems. These are not run-of-the mill homages, written by ‘evolved’ humans looking tenderly down at the dumb animals. Madhuri places herself on the same level as her subjects, and sees the whole kitty.

David Hill, author, Mastering Madness

Thank you very much for the beautiful book.

I feel you are flying with cat.

What a wonderful thing is happening!

Mamoru Kohrogi (Kohrogi-sensei), Japan
Almost halfway through the book. It is delightful, genius, engaging, engrossing. Carol, Alabama
What an absolutely incredible book of illustrations and poems… It’s like a fine wine, savoured slowly. After we’ve worked our way through, I want to lend this to one of our closest friends… a total cat lover with two cats! Ken and Liz, Portland, Oregon
It’s just gorgeous, it’s all about your little world… it’s so special – such a treat! Thank you so much, it’s going on my special spot – a place of honour where people see it when they walk in. Such a treat to come home to. Peggy Sands, book designer, Colorado
Your cat book is wonderful. Siddhena liked it – he looked at it for a long time. Punya, Newcastle

About Madhuri Z K Akin

Madhuri Z K Akin

Madhuri was born in California in 1952. She studied poetry and dance at UC Riverside, then in 1970 left hitchhiking on her travels, was invited into a film as a dancing extra, ending up in Europe for two years, where she wrote, published, and had unwise teenage misadventures. She returned to San Francisco, where she performed poetry and acted in dubious films. Her younger sister had meanwhile made it to India, where she met the mystic Osho, then called Bhagwan. She sent for her sister and mother to share in the revelation.

Madhuri then spent 30 years in Osho's communes, meditating, working, dancing, and eventually teaching psychic opening.

Her first book, Impassioned Cows by Moonlight, was published by Hanging Loose Press, New York, in 1974. She is the author of nine books, including the memoir Love at Dancing Leaves: a Tantra Memoir, and Mistakes on the Path.

She lives in Hebden Bridge, England.