Well, there had to be one book about cats:

Ruthven Todd, Space Cat, (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1952).
Illustrated by Paul Galdone

Space Cat is a delight. A small kitten smuggles himself onto a plane where he is "rescued" by an airforce officer who takes him back to base. Being a cat, he is curious and he sneaks himself on board a test flight. Having survived that, but having been discovered, he is given his very own pressure suit. On the moon he discovers aliens, and save's his man's life.

All of this is told from the cat's point of view--he is very much in charge of his own world--and what makes it special, is that the cat--Flyball--acts just like a cat.

When he meets the floating globes he acts just as a cat would, “Gingerly he put out a paw toward it. As he put out his paw the object moved just that same distance further from him.” (50) after he has tried this several times, “Flyball tucked his podgy paws under him and sat glaring at the blue things. There did not seem to be any way in which he could reach them, and their behavior made them seem even more attractive than the crumpled paper ball had been in the rocket when there was no gravity.”(52).

I also loved the scene where Flyball tries to capture globules of milk.

If I ever work out how to load pictures to LiveJournal (it appears to involve several stages in between) I'll post a picture. Galdone's drawings are perfect.

There are three sequels, but the one I've seen, Space Cat and the Kittens anthropomorphizes to a greater degree and I didn't find it quite so appealing,

A final thought about cognitive estrangement: Todd does quite a good job about making humans seem rather alien.

Todd is an English author (a poet as well) who wrote adult novels as R.T. Cambell, and whose real name was Professor John Stubbs. Any other information would be very much appreciated.