Oct 16 2008
Thursday Thirteen: Books and Cats
Today is National Feral Cat Day and you can find out ways you can help the feral cat population in your community, just click the link. But, this is also Booking It!, so I would like to bring you thirteen books with “cat” in the title.
1. Dewey, the Small Town Library Cat Who Touched the World by Vicki Myron: How much of an impact can an animal have? How many lives can one cat touch? How is it possible for an abandoned kitten to transform a small library, save a classic American town, and eventually become famous around the world? You can’t even begin to answer those questions until you hear the charming story of Dewey Readmore Books, the beloved library cat of Spencer, Iowa.
Dewey’s story starts in the worst possible way. Only a few weeks old, on the coldest night of the year, he was stuffed into the returned book slot at the Spencer Public Library. He was found the next morning by library director, Vicki Myron, a single mother who had survived the loss of her family farm, a breast cancer scare, and an alcoholic husband. Dewey won her heart, and the hearts of the staff, by pulling himself up and hobbling on frostbitten feet to nudge each of them in a gesture of thanks and love. For the next nineteen years, he never stopped charming the people of Spencer with his enthusiasm, warmth, humility, (for a cat) and, above all, his sixth sense about who needed him most.
As his fame grew from town to town, then state to state, and finally, amazingly, worldwide, Dewey became more than just a friend; he became a source of pride for an extraordinary Heartland farming town pulling its way slowly back from the greatest crisis in its long history.
2.All Cats Have Asperger’s Syndrome, by Kathy Hoopman: All Cats Have Asperger Syndrome takes a playful look at Asperger Syndrome (AS), drawing inspiration from the feline world in a way that will strike a chord with all those who are familiar with AS.
Delightful color photographs of cats bring to life familiar characteristics such as sensitive hearing, scampering at the first sign of being stroked and particular eating habits.
Touching, humorous and insightful, this book evokes the difficulties and joys of raising a child who is different and leaves the reader with a sense of the dignity, individuality and potential of people with AS.
This engaging book is an ideal, gentle introduction to the world of AS.
3. Bad Cat: 244 Not-So-Pretty Kitties and Cats Gone Bad by Jim Edgar:Not since Kliban has there been a cat book this edgy. Edgy as in Bosco, the demonic Siamese with the out-of-focus eyes, razor-sharp fangs, and his own idea of Feng Shui. Or the half-shaved freak named Mr. Fliegel, who looks like a cross between a poodle and a lion. Mr. Fliegel shrugs and says, “Chicks dig me.” Or Kato, resplendent in his Three Musketeers outfit: “One for all, blah blah blah . . . now just get me out of this @#%&ing costume!” Or Clark, whose hobby is eating other cats’ food. Tina, who somehow always just misses the litter box . . . sucker. And the guilty-looking Clarence, caught with a Barbie doll in flagrante delicto. Clarence’s defiant defense: “She was naked when I came in. . . .”
Just as Kliban got us to think about the cat as something far more interesting than an innocuous house pet, and Suzy Becker taught us that cats possess a Buddha-like wisdom (together Cat and All I Need to Know I Learned from My Cat have more than 2.6 million copies in print), Jim Edgar reveals yet another facet of the ever-mesmerizing animal. Brooding, deranged, antisocial, these are kitties with attitude and borderline personality problems–ah, but what hilarious fun it is to read about them. All 244 photographed in terrifying full color in their most unflattering moments, with a quote plus vital stats: name, breed, age, and hobby. Get to know them. Then see if you can ever forget them.
4. Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut: One of Vonnegut’s major works, this is an apocalyptic tale of the planet’s ultimate fate, featuring a cast of unlikely heroes.
5. Hate That Cat: A Novel by Sharon Creech:
Jack
Room 204—Miss Stretchberry
February 25
Today the fat black cat
up in the tree by the bus stop
dropped a nut on my head
thunk
and when I yelled at it
that fat black cat said
Murr-mee-urrr
in a
nasty
spiteful
way.
I hate that cat.
This is the story of
Jack
words
sounds
silence
teacher
and cat.
6. I Can Has Cheezburger?: A LOLcat Colleckshun by Professor Happycat: www.icanhascheezburger.com was founded in January 2007 as a place to collect “LOLcats”—pictures of cats with funny captions. It has gone on to become a singular sensation, captivating millions and becoming one of the most visited blogs on the internet. For the book, the founders of the site have selected 200 of their favorite LOLcats from their archive of nearly one million, all of which are guaranteed to make you laugh out loud or wonder WTF?
7. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams: Williams’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play has captured both stage and film audiences since its debut in 1954. One of his best-loved and most famous plays, it exposes the lies plaguing the family of a wealthy Southern planter of humble origins.
8. Have You Seen My Cat? by Eric Carle: A little boy’s cat is missing, and he embarks on a fantastic round-the-world quest to find his lost pet. Along the way, he meets lots of interesting people and sees many beautiful members of the cat family, including lions and tigers and panthers. But over and over again he has to say “This is not my cat!” until at last he finds the cat he’s looking for — who has a delightful surprise for him.
9. The Cat Who Had 60 Whiskers by Lilian Jackson Braun: Polly Duncan is off to Paris, temporarily leaving Jim Qwilleran without his lady companion. Good thing there’s lots to keep Jim busy. Like a mysterious death from a bee sting that leaves everyone but Koko the Siamese in a state of confusion. If only the kitty with sixty whiskers would stop pussyfooting around and let Jim in on the deadly secret
10. Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, Illustrated Edition by T.S. Eliot:Eliot’s famous collection of nonsense verse about cats-the inspiration for the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Cats. This edition features pen-and-ink drolleries by Edward Gorey throughout.
11. Reserved for the Cat by Mercedes Lackey:Based loosely on the tale of Puss in Boots, Reserved for the Cat takes place in 1910 in an alternate London. A young dancer, penniless and desperate, is sure she is going mad when a cat begins talking to her mind-to-mind. But her feline guide, actually an Elemental Earth Spirit, helps her to impersonate a famous Russian ballerina and achieve the success she’s been dreaming of. Unfortunately she also attracts the attention of another Elemental Spirit—a far more threatening one—and the young dancer must once again turn to her mysteriously powerful four-legged furry friend.
12. Unadulterated Cat by Terry Pratchett and Joliffe Gray:The Unadulterated Cat is becoming an endangered species as more and more of us settle for those boring mass-produced cats the ad-men sell us - the pussies that purr into their gold-plated food bowls on the telly. But the Campaign for Real Cats sets out to change all that by helping us to recognise a true, unadulterated cat when we see one. For example: real cats have ears that look like they’ve been trimmed with pinking shears; real cats never wear flea collars . . . or appear on Christmas cards . . . or chase anything with a bell in it; real cats do eat quiche. And giblets. And butter. And anything else left on the table, if they think they can get away with it. Real cats can hear a fridge door opening two rooms away . . .
13. Cat and Mouse by James Patterson:That monstrous villain Gary Soneji is back in Cat & Mouse, the fourthbook in James Patterson’s series about Alex Cross, a police forensic psychologist, buthe’s not alone. In seeming support of the premise that you can never have too much of abad thing, Patterson has thrown a second serial killer into the mix: Mr. Smith, amysterious killer terrorizing Europe while Soneji practices his own brand of evil alongthe Eastern Seaboard. With two killers to track, Cross has his hands full–andPatterson has another hit.
