Real cats never eat from bowls (at least, not the ones marked CAT).

Real cats never wear flea collars...or appear on birthday 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. They can hear a fridge door opening two rooms away.

Real cats don't need names. But they often get called them.

'Yaargeroffoutofityarbastard' does quite nicely.

I have a cat, Galli, and she is an enigma to me. Sometimes she's sweet, sometimes she's the opposite of that and it would seem that Pratchett knows about cats too. When he writes about Greebo, Nanny Ogg's scary moggy in the Discworld books, he captures the essence of cattishness. So when I saw that he had written a book of cat anecdotes, along with pictures too, I had to get it...not just in my quest to read everything Pratchett has ever written either...it's likely to be hilarious.

March 1st 2002
up to page 84

Anyone who has ever shared their home with a cat will get a huge kick out of this book. I spent a very happy afternoon shedding tears of laughter as I read Pratchett's description of medicating his cat. I've been there and done that so very many times, I had to read it out to my mum...then both of us were reeling! There are parts of it that fall flat, but the bits that hit the mark far outweigh them and I can't wait to read more.

I haven't yet to decide if Galli can be considered 'real' yet, but she's certainly fairly substantial!

March 19th 2002
The End

I really enjoyed reading this, though I have to admit that it wasn't the cartoons that had me in stitches, but Pratchett's prose.

There were loads of funny anecdotes, and I totally related to many of them thanks to Galli-cat. However the writing style wasn't always up to the incredibly high standard I'm used to from my favourite author. At times it didn't flow quite as well as it could, and there really wasn't enough room in the book to do some of the stories justice. I did laugh though...a lot!