best cat book ever!!!

It's the best cat book ever! The Silent Miaow by Paul Gallico. It's a manual written by an anonymous, stray feline on how to take over a family. Anybody else read it?

No, I haven't, sorry.

There are a lot of good cat books. :)

I have read it! And reviewed it! It was hilarious. Paul Gallico also wrote another great cat book, "Jennie"

I also liked it. The story was darker, but really stuck with me. It's also know as The Abandoned.

LT links The Abandoned to another book, not Jennie. I think Jennie is an older version. Anyway, it's excellent!

I have The Silent Miaow but I haven't read it yet. I will have to do that soon. So far, my favorite cat book is The Dalai Lama's Cat, which is fiction.

Mine is Fur Person, an older book by May Sarton.

I enjoyed The Dalai Lama's Cat, but The Silent Miaow is definitely better!

Thomasina, also by Paul Gallico is my favourite; but it is a real weepie. And yes, I have read The Silent Miaow.

Hugh Leonard's Rover and Other Cats is very good, it tells the story of all the cats he has known, especially his favourite, Dubh. Tears guaranteed.

The books by Doreen Tovey are very good and mostly only tears of laugher there.

Agreed, The Silent Miaow is terrific! I've had a copy for many years. It's probably my favorite Gallico book.

My favorite recent cat book read is Love Saves the Day by Gwen Cooper. It's going to be on my top 5 reads this year, I am sure.

Another vote for Doreen Tovey! I read her first book, Cats in the Belfry, at an impressionable age, laughed more than I had ever laughed before, and became determined to have a Siamese cat of my own, an ambition which I did not achieve for another twenty years or so. Now I've had several, and they really are as delightful and as much trouble as Doreen Tovey described!

11, 14>

I just read Cats in the Belfry based on your recommendations. It was delightful!

Thank you,

k4k

I giggle/sorted my way through a Doreen Tovey book - can't remember at the moment which one. Her writing is a delight.

Going to have to add Silent Miaow to my TBR list. The cat book that touched me most was Making Rounds with Oscar.

I have a gorgeous old copy of Cats in the Belfry at home but haven't read it yet, will move it up my TBR list :)

I just found a copy of What's Michael #10 in a used bookstore and I realized I had to recommend the whole series to this group - wonderful drawings of cats and spot-on observations of cat behavior and human interactions with them. (Also funny.)

The first episode in volume 10 is replicated in my living room every morning at around 3:00 am.

The Theory of Cat Gravity by Robin Wood.

Clears up all sorts of mysteries with very compelling thought experiments, easily verified in your own household.

Some cat stories I have enjoyed very much are The Autobiography of Foudini M. Cat by Susan Fromberg Schaeffer, Homer's Odyssey by Gwen Cooper, and The Cat Who Went to Paris by Peter Gethers. And I can't forget Cleveland Amory's The Cat Who Came for Christmas and the follow-ups!

(I have The Silent Miaow and Making Rounds with Oscar on Mt. TBR right now. Gotta get them read!)

If anyone likes nonfiction books about cats I can recommend both Cat sense by John Bradshaw, which I am reading right now, and The Tribe of Tiger by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, which I read last year and thoroughly enjoyed, although I think her book on dogs, The Hidden Life of Dogs was better-written.

#22: I was just going to recommend Cat Sense too, until I saw your post! I picked it up after losing interest a few weeks ago (the first 2 chapters are all about the history of cats from thousands of years ago). Now I am in chapter 3, where the author delves into the development of cats from infancy through kittenhood. He goes into their socialization, senses, beginnings as a hunter, etc. All very interesting info that is enabling me to better understand my own cat.

Cat books that I liked are Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World and James Bowen's book about he and his street cat Bob A Street Cat Named Bob and I'm currently reading The World according to Bob. James Bowen's writing is trying but the stories are excellent :)

"Jennie" from Paul Gallico. The first cat story book I read almost 25 years ago. It was a book from the library, but I found it such a lovely book that I bought it.
"Minoes" from Annie M.G. Smith is also a funny book. It's a book for children, but still nice for grown ups.

The Unadulterated Cat by Terry Pratchett. All about how to tell the difference between real and fake cats. Typical Pratchett humour, and funny pictures, too.

I really liked Waiting for Gertrude and The Fur Person by Mary Sarton.

>27 morningwalker: I forgot about The Fur Person; that is a good one!

I've read it :)! So many good cat books to read these days. It was one of the originals.

I could pee on this
Just soo much fun!

Hello from Oz.

Rare call in but I couldn't read this without mentioning The Derek Tangye Minack Chronicles, as it would be very sad if they weren't recorded here, for cat lovers to find.

Really gentle, lovely couple who leave careers, I think Derek was MI5 in WW2 and Jeannie was publicity officer with The Savoy, mixing with all the VIPs. They married and ran off to run a flower/spud farm in Cornwall, with very few basic facilities.

Derek came from a well off family, very traditional, dog people. Not even cat likers... Derek was quite convinced he was allergic to cats. Jeannie had a cat, a big ginger. Derek asked where he was going when they married. Lesson 1 for Derek.

Slowly, Derek loses his heart. I think there are more than 20 books to read. Derek is heartbroken when the first cat dies, but was under the impression that it would be the last cat Jeannie would have, because he still wasn't a cat liker. Just had met the most special cat in the world.

Lesson 2 for Derek.

The years go by, cats come and enchant, and die and new ones come. Always either ginger or black, but always by chance. They take in a needy donkey and end up with mother and son donkey, who accompany them on walks, on the cliffs, by choice, loose. They share their lives with a drake and a gull and girls who come to help with the flowers, etc. One cat arrival still makes me weep, every time I tell the story, despite it being at least 30 years since I last read that actual title, despite telling at least 2 people a year about the books. Now, aware I will probably share that story with a cat lover, I anxiously search for tissues, before I begin...

Very gentle records of years passing, of cats who enchant. Of deaths that tear out your heart..

They had no children and Minack can be visited. Derek's family run the trust. Minack is kept safe for the wildlife. His nephew is a handsome, muscled policeman in a neighbouring county and said it had been decades since anyone had asked him if he was related to Derek.

Jeannie wrote an autobiography and Derek's first book rather sums up his niceness. All around him in WW2, famous people dying were filling the papers and he decided to edit a book where people he knew wrote a chapter on some nobody who died, who was important to them and deserved people to know about them.and mourn them. I think he wrote one himself.

It is entitled WENT THE DAY WELL... from the quotation

There is a website and you can get the order of books to read. Possibly they might sell titles. He was very well known, but most of his readers are now WELL over 60. I think you will get it if you just type in Minack or Derek and Jeannie Tangye.

Mostly, you will find them in dusty 2nd hand bookshops. I think he has been dead for a good 30 years. I do find tho', that if I think something happened 5 years ago, people laugh and say, You mean 10 or 12 years ago..." So apologies for probably far off estimations.

I love the Doreen Tovey books as well. I can't get access to my cat books, which might have more older authors to chase, at present.

Paul.Gallico cat books are lovely. But like The Snow Goose, he has made me spend so much on tissues.
.

It's not dormant now! don't thank me