the day has come: puss in print on kindle

thank you kib prestridge for your awesome cover

Yes, I know, you've heard me talk about it so long you thought it was never going to happen.  Me too.
Yet here it is, Puss in Print: A collection from thepetmuseum.com.
Available right the heck now on Kindle.  Soon to be available on Barnes&Noble NOOK.
This has been a learning experience and a half, and I don't think I'm done learning yet.  Should you pick up this little trifle, please know it comes with my warmest affection for all my Museum friends and the kind support you've given me all these years!
Big shout to the gang at Booknook, without whom this book would not ever had been prepared for all these brave new electronic platforms!

musings on a cat's contentment

. . . I do not envy the placidity of men and women of manifestly contracted understandings. I might as well envy (as I have heard some foolish people say they did) the still more placid lives of our domestic animals. I delight to contemplate — I have no wish to imitate — the life of any sort of tabby. My cat enjoys her existence in common with me up to a certain point. When in the winter evening I draw the easy-chair to- wards the fire, she couches before me on the rug. We both enjoy the light, the warmth, the softness, the repose, and for a moment I distinctly congratulate myself on this perfect cat-like felicity. But this pleasant state of things must be, with me, the condition only for some higher enjoyment. I must converse with a friend, I must read books, I must think my thoughts, I must lose myself in their labyrinth. Puss, on the rug, stops where I begin — feels all the peace, the comfort, and the warmth, and stops there perfectly content. I see her close her eyes and open them again, quite satisfied that everything about her is as stationary as herself. . Well, I will not envy puss. I will take, by sympathy, her little contented life into my own, and so enrich my being with one more kindly sentiment.

-- Smith, W. Gravenhurst, or, thoughts on good and evil. Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons.pp. 177-8  William Smith (1808-72) was an English philosopher and writer, of whom it is recorded that after his law training he "served out his articles as a solicitor with excessive distaste."

book review: the story of fester cat

The Story of Fester Cat: How One Remarkable Cat Changed Two Men's Lives, by Paul Magrs (Berkley, ISBN 978-0-425-27504-7)

Is it such a stretch to say a pet is the keystone of the home you've made?  You'd never get an argument from me.  Nor would you get one from Paul Magrs, the British writer who shared his life and often his laptop with a scrappy black and white fellow named Fester.  Magrs' The Story of Fester Cat, just published on November 4, tells us about love, loss, searching, and gratitude as the feline member of the family saw it.  Does a cat understand these things?  Of course he does, and sometimes better than his humans do.
The story begins at the end:  Fester's been wobbly and unwell, and it turns out it's time to depart this life as we know it.  As sad as that is, Fester's voice immediately takes us back to the beginning:  we follow Fester through days as a hungry, grubby, but pragmatic one-and-a-half-fanged stray on the streets of Manchester, then sigh with satisfaction when he picks someone to take him in.  His new family, consisting of Magrs and his partner Jeremy, cleans him up and treats him like the prince he knows he is.  Much of the charm of this tale comes from Fester's unshakable confidence that all will be well if the cat's only made the center of everything:  why argue, when you could be petting the cat?
The story follows all members of the household through ups and downs.  There's trips to the vet.  There's the joys and stresses of the holidays, during which family visits reveal why the household might be specially receptive to a little homeless cat.  There's quality time in the garden.  Career struggles, rough patches in love, a bossy scruffy cat that simply moves in and hogs the goodies for a while:  throughout it all, Fester speaks his lively mind as he reminds his humans, and us, what remains truly important.  There is always a garden somewhere, and we can all go there.  Listen to the cat.  Ungow.

Full disclosure: I received a review copy of this book.
Paul Magrs's blog: Life on Magrs (it's pronounced Mars)
Fester Cat's Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/Festerthecat