The Blanket Cats

I saw The Blanket Cats and thought it sounded like a cute read. The premise is that there's a pet store that rents out cats for three days to people; as long as the cat has its blanket, the cat is fine in the new environment. The endorsement on the cover even said "Utterly charming...I would read a hundred of these stories," so I was ready for some cute stories about cats in temporary homes. So I was utterly unprepared for the reality that is The Blanket Cats: terrible people, terrible situations, and a cat being there for no real reason.

There are seven stories in The Blanket Cats. The first one is about a childless couple who decided to try renting a cat to see if a cat would work in their lifestyle. But the couple is a couple in name only; after they were unable to have children, they basically started leading separate lives at the wife's insistence (they have separate bedrooms, where they go to hang out alone all the time). The wife is enamored with the cat, until the cat catches a mouse when they take her to a park. At that point she wants nothing to do with the cat, though the story sort of implies that maybe the couple will be a bit closer now? I'm not sure though because the story just kind of abruptly ends (honestly, that's how most of the stories in this collection end).

The second one is about a lady who always rented the same cat every few months. The two of them would go off on adventures together. The cat she normally rented had retired, but the pet store owner let the lady take the cat on one more adventure. This one had some supernatural elements to the story, where the cat seemed to be able to show her either memories of people or the future of people. As the story unfolded, it turned out the lady had cancer, she stole from the company she worked for (who were all good people) and was intending to commit suicide. The story ended at the beach where she didn't drown herself, and the cops finally caught up with her.

The third story is about a loud and obnoxious man and his son, who together rented a cat (well, the pet store owner let the boy rent the cat - he didn't trust the father). It turned out the boy had been bullying another kid at school quite badly. The boy named the cat his own name, and seemed to use the cat to work through his own emotions? It was a bit confusing because both the cat and the boy had the same names. Either way, it wasn't a good story.

This was the point where I was pretty sure that endorsement on the front cover was lying.

The fourth story was about a family whose cat had passed. But they were having their grandmother with dementia over for the last time before the grandmother went into a home. And the grandmother had loved their cat, so rather than tell her the cat had died, they rented one in the hopes that she wouldn't notice. This story also featured the family's older daughter lying about breaking up with her boyfriend, so she asked him to come to dinner for her grandmother's sake. 

So basically more terrible people.

The fifth story was arguably the best of the lot. A man lived in an apartment building where no pets were allowed. The landlord would periodically rent a cat from the Blanket Cat place who was a fairly rough, kind of mean cat; he would go through the building and use the cat to find out if any of the tenants had animals (and promptly evict them). The main character's girlfriend wanted to move in with him, but she had a cat, so they decided to rent that same cat in the hopes that the two would be okay with each other come inspection day. Unfortunately, their kitten loved the older cat too much and got super excited when she could smell him.

This story had some of the most interesting and sympathetic characters. The landlord had a very sad story, and while he was a gruff man, he was by no means horrible (when he discovers the kitten, yes he wants the couple out, but he also wants them to get better jobs/be financially better off before they leave). The cat he rented out also had an interesting and tragic story (he was the kitten of his family before they passed), so while the man didn't want the cat living with him full time, he still gets him to visit often. This was the one story that I genuinely thought was good - I didn't feel like anyone was horrible.

The sixth story was also really good. This one was the only one from one of the cat's perspectives. One of the cats gets rented out to someone who seems like a pretty horrible cat guardian. So the cat takes off on the first chance he gets. He jumps into the back of a truck to get away, and discovers two kids who are running away from home. The cat helps them, then at the end of the story moves on with the intention of helping others.

Again, this story had some good people going through some tough things. Some of the things going on from the cat's perspective were a bit weird, but overall I really enjoyed this one, too.

But we can't end on a good note, can we? No, of course not. So that brings us to the final story of the collection. A man was laid off from work, and his family will need to sell their house and go back to a smaller apartment. The man feels like he has betrayed everyone, and wants to make even just one dream of his kids' come true: they had told him they wanted a cat before, so he rents one for a few days. His wife is against it. His daughter basically doesn't want to give him the time of day. But his son is quite excited. The two of them attempt to build some memories (with the women wanting no part in this). But when their real estate agent surprises them with some clients who are interested in viewing the house, the couple send the kids and cat to the park. And their daughter takes the blanket from the cat's carrier and purposefully leaves it at the park.

Now, this one didn't feel as horrible as the earlier stories in the collection. I felt like these were good people dealing with a traumatic situation. But the story itself wasn't a good read. It dragged in weird parts (like when the dad tried to get his son to guess what was in the cat carrier....why would a moment like that need to go on?) but also wrapped up too quickly. This story felt like it could have been more fleshed out. This was especially true of the end; the end just sort of happens, and I didn't feel like there was good closure (the father and daughter went back to the park to retrieve the blanket).

So that was The Blanket Cats. It's not a charming read, and I would not read hundreds of these stories. These seven were enough, thank you. 

Play With Your Cat! The Essential Guide to Interactive Play for a Happier, Healthier Feline

It's honestly been awhile since I finished anything more than a graphic novel (I read a few over the last few months that I didn't document here). So I was very happy to actually make it through Mikel Maria Delgado, PhD's Play With Your Cat! The Essential Guide to Interactive Play for a Happier, Healthier Feline. I've been reading the book on and off for a month or so, and finally sat down to finish it this afternoon.

Play With Your Cat! is full of excellent advice for anyone who has a cat and wants to engage with them more through play (which honestly should be everyone who owns a cat - having a cat in your life should mean that playing with them comes with the territory, much like having a dog means you need to be out walking with them!) Delgado goes through the (somewhat lacking) science, busting myths like "some cats aren't playful," and "cats are aloof and don't like people." 

While it took me a bit to get through, Play With Your Cat! is honestly a fairly quick read. I recommend it for all the cat lovers out there who want to learn more about strengthening their bond with their cats through play!

Warriors: Fire and Ice

 I finished Warriors Books 2: Fire and Ice the other day.  Overall I found the book okay - I didn't like it as much as the first one though.

Fire and Ice picks up right after Into the Wild. Fireheart and Graystripe are warriors now, and just finished their vigils.  They are then sent on their first warrior mission: to bring WindClan back after they were driven off by ShadowClan.  

This....happened a lot easier and quicker than I thought it would.  They picked up the trail fairly quickly, and basically brought everyone back without incident.  But on their way back to ThunderClan, they returned through RiverClan territory because it was a shorter route, and managed to get into a fight.  A ThunderClan patrol headed by Tigerclaw came to their rescue, but in the scuffle, a RiverClan warrior fell into the river and drowned.  Everyone said there would be consequences from that, but the consequences never really materialized during the book, so I'm not really sure what will happen with that.

In the wake of those events, Bluestar declares they need to train more warriors, so both Fireheart and Graystripe are given new apprentices.  While training their new apprentices, Graystripe encounters a she-cat from RiverClan whom he falls in love with.  And with Graystripe being distracted and unavailable for Fireheart (and even for Graystripe's own apprentice), Fireheart finds himself spending more and more time back at the Two-Leg place with his sister (who brings her firstborn son to Fireheart to train as a Warrior, too).  

Fire and Ice deals primarily with issues of fitting in, and loyalty.  As a former kittypet, Fireheart feels he doesn't fit in with the others (some of which still bring up his kittypet roots), and doesn't have a shared history and culture with them.  This is made even worse when he and Graystripe start scrapping because Fireheart is worried about (and uncomfortable covering for) him during his affair with the RiverClan cat.

While these are interesting topics (and important for kids to think about - these are children's books, afterall), I felt that the execution wasn't very good.  The book felt like it was written mainly in a telling fashion, and so I had a really hard time picturing anything.  It also kind of moved abruptly - something would happen, and suddenly it was months later.  

So this definitely wasn't my favourite book.  But I am hopeful that the next book, Forest of Secrets, will be better!

Warriors: Into the Wild

A while ago, a friend of mine got me the first five Warriors books by Erin Hunter. After finishing The Unfamiliar Garden, I wanted to read something totally different from what I've been reading lately, and thought this would be a good time to give them a try!

Into the Wild is about Rusty, a pet cat who dreams of a wild life. A chance encounter with some of the wild cats of ThunderClan from the nearby woods gives him the choice of joining them, or remaining a house cat with an easy life (though, the wild cats assure him that life too has some sacrifices in that he will not remain an intact Tom cat). Opting to fulfill his dreams, he joins ThunderClan, embracing their training to become one of their Warriors.

One of my biggest complaints about the story, particularly in the beginning, was that it was hard to keep all the characters straight (I realized near the end of the book that there was actually a character list in the beginning pages, but I missed it when I first started reading - that would have been very helpful to realize it was there sooner!!!) Once I got to know the characters, that got a bit easier, and I found myself enjoying the story a bit more. But I still found myself tripped up from time to time, particularly when cats from other clans were involved. 

I also had no idea how dark this book would be. It's a story for I think tweens (it felt a little on the easy side for a young adult book), and it has a lot of characters die in it, mostly from battles between the clans. 

While most of the characters were a bit two-dimensional, I still liked them a lot, especially the friendship between the three apprentices Firepaw (Rusty renamed once he joined ThunderClan), Graypaw, and Ravenpaw. I also really liked Yellowfang - she was a lot more nuanced than most of the other older cats. But I will admit that at times it was hard to remember that they were all cats - some of the words and actions that Hunter used kept making me picture them all as humans. 

Overall though, Into the Wild was a solid introduction to the world of Warriors. I'm looking forward to reading book 2.

Tyke & Dusty: An Authorized Biography of Two House Cats

A few friends of mine keep giving me hilarious and random cat books for my birthday and other special occasions (that's how I ended up with Rhubarb).  That's how I ended up with Bill MacDonald's Tyke & Dusty: An Authorized Biography of Two House Cats.  Hilariously, Tyke & Dusty is not the first book I read by MacDonald; I picked up Vive Zigoto! Travels Through the South of France with a Lady Journalist and Her Cat many years ago (before I started this blog!) MacDonald was a local author who was very prolific; I believe the local library has around thirty of his books!

Tyke & Dusty goes through the lives of MacDonald's male cats Tyke and Dusty.  He and his wife, Cathy, got Dusty first; they talked MacDonald's aunt into taking the kitten on a trial basis, but after that didn't work out Dusty went to live with MacDonald.  A few months later (MacDonald and Cathy thought he might be lonely and unhappy at the time, though in hindsight they realize this probably wasn't the case), they adopted Tyke.  Where Dusty was a laid back, mellow, and friendly boy, Tyke was a tom cat through and through who was very athletic and liked to pick fights with other cats.

Tyke & Dusty details the lives of these two cats, from living in an apartment, moving to a bungalow, and spending their summers out at Silver Islet.  Their adventures are wildly entertaining and unique to each cat because of their wildly different personalities (and athletic abilities).  Despite running free out at Silver Islet every summer, both boys lived to very respectable ages: Tyke passed away at 16, while Dusty lived to be 20!

MacDonald gives the cats dialogue through the book (he mentions it in his foreword; it is what he believed the cats might have said under the circumstances).  I found most of this was completely unnecessary because MacDonald's writing while describing whatever situation the cats were in made it pretty clear what the cats might be thinking (particularly to anyone who lives with a house cat, who I think is the main audience for this book).  Sure, some of the dialogue he wrote for them was clever, but overall it was rather unnecessary. 

I also found it interesting that MacDonald also notes that he read The Cat Who Came for Christmas by Cleveland Amory.  Within the book, Amory says that he doesn't like how most animal books end with the animal dying, so he ends the book before the animal dies.  Unfortunately MacDonald does not do the same within Tyke & Dusty; he goes right to the end of both their lives (and I cried a lot during the last few chapters).

I wouldn't be opposed to reading more of MacDonald's writing.  From reading Tyke & Dusty (I don't really remember Vive Zigoto!) I quite liked his writing.  :)

As a side note, for some reason I keep pronouncing Tyke as "Ty-kee," even though I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be just "Tyke" (rhyming with "trike" or "bike").

Rhubarb

A friend of mine found H. Allen Smith's Rhubarb and gave it to me (I have a few friends who give me hilarious looking and sounding cat books).  I wasn't really sure what to make of Rhubarb, but it sounded hilarious (especially when it had an endorsement by Prof. Elmer Roessner from the first review that stated "This book betokens the death of the novel form in America").

Rhubarb is the story of a cat named Rhubarb that inherits a fortune and a baseball team.  Just before his owner passed away, the man decided to bequeath everything to the cat rather than his daughter; he also named Eric Yaeger as Rhubarb's guardian.  So his daughter challenges the will.  Yaeger has his hands full trying to protect the cat while also bringing him out into society because of course once the press gets wind of what happened Rhubarb becomes an instant celebrity.  On his side, Yaeger has Doom, an ex-bookie who has dreams of being a detective, Miss Polly Pinckley, the strong, beautiful, and wealthy neighbour to Rhubarb, Miss Clarissa Wood, a self-proclaimed expert on cats, Willy Bodfish, the cook, and Len Sickles, the manager of the baseball team.  Along with defending the will, the team also has to convince Rhubarb's baseball team that it's okay to be working for a cat!

The premise is quite funny (I loved how everyone got so excited about Rhubarb being so wealthy - like hotels would try to turn Eric and crew away because he had a cat with them until he told them it was Rhubarb, then suddenly everything was fine!) but the book gets bogged down in quite a few places by things that really don't matter.  For example, there was a whole chapter talking about Lester's wife, who has no actual bearing on the book.  At times like these, I found it really hard to keep reading the book because I was bored and wanted to get back to the actual plot (but I've never read a book by Smith before so I wasn't sure if I could get away with skipping chapters). 

I was also a bit annoyed with what happened with Miss Polly Pinckley.  She was a really interesting character - she was absurdly strong and was very conscious of her health.  But then she invited Eric Yaeger over to wrestle....and suddenly "he was being the masterful male" and her character toned down.  She became obsessed with sex with him (and he later had to ration sex out to her because she was wanting it too often).  He also had to find something to do with her (but why?  Surely she was getting along just fine before he showed up into her life?) so made her basically a secretary.  Now I know this is most likely thanks to Rhubarb being a product of its time (it was originally published in 1946), but I didn't really like reading this sort of thing.

So all in all, I think Rhubarb had some potential, but the execution of the book as a whole just didn't really work.  If some of the extraneous stuff had been cut in favour of strengthening the actual plot, it would have been a much better book.  Of course, you may think differently than me: looking at all the reviews on Goodreads and Amazon, I appear to be in the minority; most people who have read it think quite highly of it.  So you'll have to read it and judge for yourself.

You CAN Train Your Cat: Secrets of a Master Cat Trainer

I have many, many books I feel that for one reason or another I should be reading. For one thing, I'm going to a conference at the end of June and want to be ready for it. For another thing, I have around 130 books sitting around here that need reading. But when Gregory Popovich's You CAN Train Your Cat: Secrets of a Master Cat Trainer showed up at work, I sort of dropped everything in order to read it.

First, some back story: several months ago now, I adopted an adorable and super lovable cat. And while I love him so much, it's been a bit frustrating at times trying to keep him off the stove or away from food. And now that it's warmer out, he wants to be outside all the time. And not leashed either. So yeah, it's frustrating as the two of us are trying to negotiate our relationship.

So when I saw Popovich's book at work, I knew I needed to read it. Popovich is the founder of the World Famous Popovich Comedy Pet Theater, in which he has cats (and some other pet animals) perform tricks. Now, I'm not interested in making my cat perform tricks. But I was hoping Popovich would have some incite into how to better train my cat around the house.

Popovich's book can pretty much be summed up with the following: patience, positive reinforcement, and a loving attitude will train your cat.  It's basically really logical stuff. Cats don't ever forget a bad experience, so negative reinforcement isn't the way to go. And any time your cat isn't behaving, check for other reasons (like are you paying enough attention to him or her?) Have patience with your cat, and they will try to please you as best as they can. 

Oh, and if you're trying to get them to do tricks, you have to look at what the cat likes to do, and work with that. And of course, never punish them for NOT doing a trick - they're a cat, not a robot that performs on command.

So basically, for my purposes, Popovich was saying to just keep doing what I'm doing. And that's reassuring in itself. There's no magic secret to training your cat. Just be a loving owner and have patience.

Chinese Whiskers

I spied Pallavi Aiyar's Chinese Whiskers last year at work when it was on the new book shelf.  I marked it as something I wanted to read, but then forgot about it in my rush of reading other books.  But after my cat passed away last week, I was in the mood for a cute cat story. And luckily Chinese Whiskers didn't disappoint!

Chinese Whiskers is the story of two cats, Tofu and Soyabean.  They come from very different backgrounds: Tofu was a dustbin cat, the middle of five kittens; Soyabean was the spoiled only child of a rich cat.  But both are adopted by a foreign couple and end up the best of friends, growing from kittens to adulthood in one of Beijing's hutongs.  Soyabean and Tofu couldn't be more different: the male Soyabean is a friendly cat who loves to eat; Tofu is a small female who takes a long time to trust anyone and anything. 

A chance remark lands Soyabean as the star of a cat food commercial.  But his stardom comes at a bad time: this is when the SARS outbreak was being blamed on cats.  And then Tofu gets locked out of the house and kidnapped by someone who has been murdering pets.  Luckily her older brother, a tough alley cat from the Ghost Street Gang, saw and tells her to escape; he tells her he'll find her no matter what happens!

Meanwhile, Soyabean blames himself for Tofu's disappearance.  If he hadn't been watching his commercial instead of watching out for her, perhaps none of this would have happened!  But while he is moping around the house, he discovers that the people he is modelling for have been poisoning the cat food he's been helping to sell.  Unfortunately he finds himself at a loss when he is unable to communicate this to his owner.  But once Tofu makes it back home, the two hatch a plan to reveal that the food is poisoned to the humans.  It'll take all of Soyabean's talents at acting and more than a little bit of luck to pull off.

Chinese Whiskers was a really cute story.  These two cats reminded me of my two (except that Soyabean and Tofu actually got along).  My one complaint is that the book seemed to wrap itself up about a chapter before it actually ended.  If not for that, I would have given it five stars on Goodreads, instead of the four I ended up giving.