Cats (play)

Cats, first performed in 1981, is a sung-through musical composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber, based on the children's book Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T.S. Eliot. The musical tells the story of a tribe of cats called the Jellicles, who periodically gather for the "Jellicle choice," when their chieftain announces which cat has been chosen to ascend to the Heaviside Layer and come back to a new life.

Cats in "Natural Selection"
Delip, a Hripirt immigration screener stationed in New York City, attended a Broadway performance of Cats to help her better understand the human mind. The play featured humans dressed up as small domesticated beasts, cavorting in a heap of garbage. The play was not simply animal-mimicry, as the actors playing beasts represented human characteristics, such as vanity and gluttony. From a Hripirt frame of reference, the allegory was similar to the morality plays of Tipli the Humble, although the concept of sentient actors playing beasts who behave like the actors' own kind had no precedent.

The beasts paraded before their Elder, hoping to be chosen to ascend to animal paradise, with their characteristics determining which one was to be selected. This amused Delip, for it seemed similar to her job of screening Earth candidates for immigrant status. Thus, Delip later told Mullnor and Bingokk that the play amused her, though not for the same reasons that the humans liked it.

Literary comment
While Cats is very clearly described, the story does not state its title nor the names of any characters.