15 January, 1965.

Let the record (excuse the pun) state that this morning’s ‘Song for a Missing Cat’ is not so much a complaint as a statement of fact. I’ve been on pins all week and quite frankly, I’m exhausted.

Written by Ray Davies, on the train to the studio (with lyrics written in a local coffee shop during a break in recording), this appeared on The Kinks second album Kinda Kinks although it was actually left over from their first album Kinks. Davies was once quoted as saying that this song “was a change of style for us, we got a bit posher!“

On its release the song gave The Kinks a global hit, reaching the top ten in seven countries and topping the charts in South Africa and here in the UK, where it spent ten weeks on the chart and one week at number one.