"The Owl and the Pussy Cat" is a song for soprano and piano composed by Igor Stravinsky in 1966, based on the eponymous text by Edward Lear.

[1][6] Robert Craft said that Stravinsky did not inform Vera of the song's existence until it was complete; he may have had her voice in mind while composing it:[4] The elegant fowl kept the composition a secret, in any case, until he had sung and played it for his feline love, not in a pea-green boat, of course, but in his sound-proof roost.

On the score's title page he drew his own rendering of Lear's illustration of the poem, to which he added waves in order to convey that his "music [was] probably rocking the boat".

[12] The world premiere performance of "The Owl and the Pussy Cat" took place at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's Bing Theatre on October 31, 1966, as part of the Monday Evening Concerts.

[6] Lawrence Morton, director of the series, kept the song's inclusion on the program a secret and only announced it to the audience moments before the performance.

[17] Arlen in his review for the Los Angeles Times praised "The Owl and the Pussy Cat" as "eminently singable" and compared it favorably to Stravinsky's Pribaoutki:[5] Naturally, the new work is based on a tone row, but reveals definite implications of tonality, retains a simple aura, has great clarity, and radiated positive charm.

[5]Musicologist Roman Vlad also held "The Owl and the Pussy Cat" in similar regard, noting that a "lay listener" encountering the song for the first time might get the impression that Stravinsky returned to the style of the Scherzo fantastique and Petrushka:[18] "The Owl and the Pussy Cat" actually does reflect something of the music of that period (especially the works with a child-like flavor in which he set to music those delightful Russian nonsense rhymes) viewed through the prism of Stravinsky's contemporary serial writing ... Stravinsky's sensibility is once again seen to be one of the essential factors working from within to ensure the unity of his seemingly protean creativeness.

[18]Luciano Berio described "The Owl and the Pussy Cat" as a "musical charm" in his program notes for its European premiere at the 1967 ISCM Festival in Venice.