Two children sitting at home on a rainy day are visited by the cat who shows them some tricks and games.

The papers in these proceedings of the 1986 Arcata Summer Institute bear witness to the extraordinarily vital and intense research in the representation theory of finite groups. The confluence of diverse mathematical disciplines has brought forth work of great scope and depth. Particularly striking is the influence of algebraic geometry and cohomology theory in the modular representation theory and the character theory of reductive groups over finite fields, and in the general modular representation theory of finite groups. The continuing developments in block theory and the general character theory of finite groups is noteworthy. The expository and research aspects of the Summer Institute are well represented by these papers.