Cat Classics in Print: Space Cat Visits Venus

Today’s classic in print is the second slim volume in the Space Cats series, Space Cat Visits Venus, written by Ruthven Todd and illustrated by Paul Galdone. This particular book was first published in 1955 and has recently been republished by Dover. We probably enjoyed the story of Space Cat’s visit to Venus even more than the original Space Cat, which means we liked it quite a lot.

The plot

We first met the little tabby named Flyball as a kitten in his first book. Now he is grown up and no one tries to tell him anymore that he shouldn’t go into space. As if he would listen anyway. In a remarkably short period of time, people have built a whole city on the surface of the moon (we do have to wonder how they managed to get funding for that, but let’s not talk about money), and they’re preparing a mission to Venus. Once again astronaut Fred Stone and his sidekick Flyball will head off to explore.

Flyball has hopes that there will be lots of mice to chase on Venus, as there are none on the moon and that’s a real drag. Even if there don’t turn out to be mice on Venus, Flyball does have some improvements to enjoy. He has a brand-new hammock that has been built to be even more comfy than his original homemade one, and he and Fred have a new spaceship that has an actual name—Halley.

Not surprisingly, they find Venus to be a strange place with an ammonia atmosphere (at least at high altitudes), a beach of blue pebbles, and sentient plants that seem to be leading them in a certain direction. Oh, and the plants think at them. There is a certain type of moss that enables telepathic communication between plants and Earthlings and even between cat and human. All Flyball and Fred have to do is keep a bit of moss with them and they’ll be able to think at each other all the time. This is neat at first, but if you think about it, having someone be able to hear all your thoughts would get tiresome, not to mention embarrassing, after a while.

It turns out the Venus plants (and the little blue Venus mouse that Flyball is not supposed to chase!) need some help from the Earthlings. Soon Earth and Venus are off to an early promising relationship of mutual aid and cooperation. The cynic in old SoLT thinks that in reality humans would be overtaken by greed and ruin the whole planet while exploiting its amazing resources for profit. But this is supposed to be a fun and positive story, so check your cynicism at the door, please.

Our verdict

Space Cat Visits Venus is indeed a fun book. We read it in one evening and found the story and illustrations every bit as delightful as the original Space Cat. Once again Flyball goes off on a space adventure, discovering previously unknown life forms. He and Fred are brave and curious but also respectful and compassionate toward the life they meet—not a bad lesson for humans to learn, we think.

So if you’re looking for a light read for yourself or a great chapter book for the cat- or space-loving kid in your life, we highly recommend Space Cat Visits Venus.

A note on the "Paws Up" system: Miss C gives either one or two paws up. One paw is for a good read; two paws is for a great read. She never gives three or four paws because that would require her to lie on her back...and Miss C does not do that!

The link below is an Amazon Associates link. If you purchase the book through this link, old SoLT and I could get some coin for our kibble account. Thank you!

Cat Classics in Print: Space Cat

Today’s Cat Classic in Print is one for you fans of cats and space—and cats in space. It’s the children’s book Space Cat, written by Ruthven Todd and illustrated by Paul Galdone, and first published in 1952. This thin volume has recently been released in a new edition by Dover and will be followed by three more books in the series (Space Cat Visits Venus, Space Cat Meets Mars, and Space Cat and the Kittens), to be released over the coming months. We enjoyed this book both because it has a cat in a spaceship and because it offers a glimpse into the fantastical world of space as envisioned by humans nearly a decade before they actually left Earth’s orbit.

A teeny little bit about Ruthven Todd

We suspect not a lot of you have heard of Ruthven Todd (we certainly hadn’t). Well, Todd (1914–1978) was an Edinburgh-born poet and novelist who was also an artist, an amateur botanist, and a William Blake scholar. He began to publish his poetry in the 1940s. Also during this time, Todd wrote detective novels under the name R. T. Campbell. These novels feature a botanist who is also a sleuth. In 1947 Todd moved to the US, and he became a citizen in the 1950s. He died in Spain as a result of chronic lung disease. (Source: ScottishPoetry Library)

A teeny bit more about Space Cat

Space Cat is the story of a gray tabby cat who is possibly the most fearless feline ever. We first meet him as a kitten who manages to get himself onto an airplane, where he meets a man who turns out to be Captain Fred Stone, a pilot and soon-to-be first man on the moon. The captain names the kitten Flyball, and soon enough the adventurous little cat has taken over the experimental station where lots of military types are working on spaceflight. He sneaks onto a rocket for a test flight, after which the captain decides Flyball should accompany him to the moon. Over the objections of the Head Guys in Charge, the cat is fitted with a pressure suit (complete with an appendage for his tail), and a little hammock is created for him in the rocket. Then off to the moon he and the captain go.

The moon that Flyball lands on is very little like the one Neil Armstrong stepped onto in 1969. It is covered with fluffy dust that Flyball and the captain sink deep into, and there is life on it. A weird sort of plant-like life, but life nonetheless. Flyball is the one who discovers the life forms, and when the captain falls and gets a leak in his helmet, it is Flyball who saves him with help from some of those life forms. Hero!

Our verdict

This is such a fun little book! Both the story and illustrations are delightful (our favorite illustration shows the captain walking toward the rocket, carrying Flyball in his little pressure suit).

Space Cat was published 9 years before the first human ventured into space (Yuri Gagarin, 1961) and 17 years before the first moon landing. That means a couple of things. First, the illustrator and author could really put their imaginations to work in creating the world that Flyball enters. Second, we felt some dissonance between that fantastical world and the real one. Old SoLT just couldn’t stop herself from thinking about all the little ways the fantasy didn’t match up to the reality. But we think this just means you can read the book on more than one level. And old SoLT has to complain a little bit about the complete lack of female characters. Interesting comparisons could be made between Space Cat and the more recent CatStronauts series, which (a) has more real-sounding sciency stuff and (b) depicts females in prominent positions. How life has changed in 66 years!

As we said, Space Cat is a fun book that you can turn into something more serious if you are so inclined. Or you can do what Todd and Galdone probably meant for you to do: read it, look at the pictures, and enjoy it.

Recommended!

A note on the "Paws Up" system: Miss C gives either one or two paws up. One paw is for a good read; two paws is for a great read. She never gives three or four paws because that would require her to lie on her back...and Miss C does not do that!

The link below is an Amazon Associates link. If you purchase the book through this link, old SoLT and I could get some coin for our kibble account. Thank you!

Cat Classics in Print: Warriors Book 1: Into the Wild

Old SoLT has been wanting to read this series since it first started in 2003, but somehow she has never gotten around to it before now. We sort of wondered if the first Warriors book, Into the Wild, can truly be considered a classic when it’s only 15 years old, but considering the sheer number of novels, novellas, “super editions,” manga, and guides it has spawned (not including box sets, we count well over 50 books on the Warriors website; we can’t be more accurate because we lost count twice and didn’t want to start over again), we decided Into the Wild is definitely a classic. And worth waiting for.

The plot

Into the Wild introduces the world of the Warrior Cats through the eyes of a young housecat—or “kittypet,” as the wild cats call them. Rusty ventures from his home with the Twolegs (humans) into the nearby woods and has his first encounter with Clan cats. He performs well in the ensuing fight, and he ends up being invited to join ThunderClan as an apprentice. He takes up the challenge and soon enough is living a tough and exciting new life with a new name—Firepaw.

Firepaw learns to hunt and fight and follow the warrior code. But all is not well in the territory of the four Clans. Each Clan has its own territory where they can hunt, but lately ShadowClan has been up to no good, demanding that the other Clans allow its cats to hunt basically wherever they want. They have already forced one clan into an agreement and pushed another clan off its territory, and now they’re eyeing ThunderClan’s forest. A big fight is brewing, and it will not be pretty.

Meanwhile, the leader of ThunderClan has taken in a disgraced former medicine cat from the hated ShadowClan. But this cat brings with her a reputation for being dangerous. Will she betray her new Clan when the battle comes?

And where should Firepaw put his loyalty? He soon learns that danger doesn’t always come from outsiders.

Our verdict

We raced through this book, repeatedly saying “Just one more chapter” until we were saying, “Almost done! Might as well keep going now.” We will tell you up front that Into the Wild is about a cat learning to be a warrior, so of course there is fighting between cats. Some of the cats are treacherous and cruel, and some cats die. But the book is written for the 8-to-12-year-old set (thus hitting old SoLT’s mental age perfectly!), so nothing is horribly graphic. We found it dramatic but not upsetting (okay, that is a lie—the part where one of our favorite cats died was upsetting, but we have recovered). We know some of you are especially sensitive to any sort of violence involving animals, though, and we wanted to be clear about the content.

Probably our favorite thing about this book is the richness of its world. Having spent just a little time in that world, it is easy to understand how the series has grown and grown. The Clans have their own history, mythology, and traditions. They have ways of honoring the dead, of seeking guidance from StarClan (when a cat dies, he or she goes to join StarClan in the night sky). Their medicine cats know what plants to gather to heal wounds and illness. Yes, it would be easy to get so caught up in the Warriors series that you’d need a guidebook to keep track of everything.

By the way, if you’re wondering (as we were) how in the world author Erin Hunter has managed to write so many books in less than two decades—she does it by actually being six people. It was quite a relief to learn that, because we’d imagined some kind of super-writer who never sleeps.

We recommend Into the Wild 100%! Just be prepared to be sucked in to a whole new world.

A note on the "Paws Up" system: Miss C gives either one or two paws up. One paw is for a good read; two paws is for a great read. She never gives three or four paws because that would require her to lie on her back...and Miss C does not do that!

The link below is an Amazon Associates link. If you purchase the book through this link, old SoLT and I could get some coin for our kibble account. Thank you!

Cat Classics in Print: Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats (1939)

Today’s Cat Classic in Print is T. S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, which we think should be in every cat person’s library. This Book of Practical Cats, first published in 1939, is a slim collection of 15 bits of whimsical verse, each of which begs to be read aloud. These poems are also the basis for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical Cats.

Eliot (1888–1965) began writing the cat poems in 1934–35 as gifts for children, including his godchildren. He had many cats during his lifetime, and it’s obvious from the names he gave them that he was a cat person. Only a true cat lover would give a cat such a memorable name as George Pushdragon or Jellylorum. Speaking of names, the “Old Possum” of the book’s title is Eliot himself. He was given this nickname by fellow poet Ezra Pound, and he signed many drafts of his cat poems with some variation of it.

Speaking of names again, this book begins with the poem that happens to be our favorite, “The Naming of Cats.” In this rhyme. Eliot posits that cats have, in fact, three names: a “sensible, everyday” name (Victor or Augustus, for example), a “more dignified” name (Munkustrap, Bombalurina), and the name that “the cat himself knows, and will never confess” (obviously I can’t give you an example!). This poem also answers that question all cat people ask: What do cats think about when they just sit there and stare? Eliot says,

T. S. Eliot, 1934.
Photo by Thomas Stearns Eliot.
Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

When you notice a cat in profound meditation,

   The reason, I tell you, is always the same:

His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation

    Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name.

Other favorites are “The Rum Tum Tugger” (“When you let him in, then he wants to be out; / He’s always on the wrong side of every door”), “Macavity: The Mystery Cat” (“he’s called the Hidden Paw—For he’s the master criminal who can defy the Law”), and “Skimbleshanks: The Railway Cat” (“You are bound to admit that it’s very nice / To know that you won’t be bothered by mice”).

Besides cats, of course, the main thing these poems have in common is the sheer fun they have with the English language. This is always one of our favorite things; after all, what’s the good of language if you can’t play around with it? These verses are the sort of thing we can return to on a dreary day when there doesn’t seem to be any fun to be had. Just read about a practical cat or two, and the day instantly looks brighter.

T. S. Eliot's illustrated cover for the
1939 edition.
Via Wikimedia Commons.

And now let’s talk about illustrations. We have a copy of the 1982 edition with illustrations by Edward Gorey. There is also a newer edition (most recently published in 2012 by Faber) with illustrations by Axel Scheffler. We enjoy Gorey’s work, so we admit to being partial, but we recommend that edition for the delight to be had by simply browsing through the illustrations (unless you don’t like Gorey illustrations, in which case, what’s wrong with you?).

Talking a little further about illustrations, Eliot himself illustrated the cover of the first edition, which depicts a man helping cats get up a ladder.

Our verdict

I think I already said that Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats belongs in every cat person’s library, but I thought it was worth repeating. This is a delightful book that is not about cats that mostly take naps. These cats have occupations (which is what makes them “practical”), and while it’s nice to read about the cat who is a steady, quiet companion, sometimes it’s more fun to read about cats doing things, living active lives. We also enjoy seeing a writer of serious, Nobel Prize–winning verse doing something lighter, something purely joyful.

So, if you have never read this book, read it!

A note on the "Paws Up" system: Miss C gives either one or two paws up. One paw is for a good read; two paws is for a great read. She never gives three or four paws because that would require her to lie on her back...and Miss C does not do that!

The link below is an Amazon Associates link. If you purchase the book through this link, old SoLT and I could get some coin for our kibble account. Thank you!

Sources

Sutherland, John. (2016). “An Introduction to Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.” Discovering Literature: 20^th Century. British Library. https://www.bl.uk/20th-century-literature/articles/an-introduction-to-old-possums-book-of-practical-cats

“Cats.” AndrewLloydWebber.com. https://www.andrewlloydwebber.com/show/cats/

Book Review: Rhubarb (1946)

Today, we’re pleased to bring you the first post in our new series, Cat Classics in Print. In this series, we’ll explore cat books from the past in many genres. We start with Rhubarb, written by H. Allen Smith (1907–1976) and first published in 1946. This tattered paperback has sat on our shelf for months (okay, a year—but we got to it eventually).

The plot

I’m going to say up front that we read this book during the horrible cold snap we had in late December and early January, when old SoLT was dreaming hard about spring and summer and baseball. She really felt like reading about baseball games played on beautiful, sunny summer days, so we were a little disappointed to find that there really isn’t a lot of baseball in Rhubarb, despite the fact that it is about a cat who inherits a professional baseball team.

The book is mostly about Rhubarb and the crazy people around him (and there are a few!). The main person who is close to Rhubarb is Eric Yeager. He’s the press secretary for one Thaddeus Banner, owner of the New York Loons, a down-on-their-luck baseball team. It’s Eric who acquires the feisty yellow cat who is then named Rhubarb after a term for a brawl on a baseball diamond. Rhubarb is known to attack dogs, and he has a habit of “collecting” (i.e., stealing) tennis balls and golf balls. Banner loves him without reservation.

Which is a lot more than can be said for Myra, Banner’s daughter. Banner does not like her at all, and he does not intend to leave his money to her. But what to do with it? Well, Banner gets the funniest idea: He’ll leave everything to Rhubarb, with Yeager as the cat’s guardian. That will make Rhubarb the owner of the Loons. But don’t expect Myra to take that lying down, and when Banner dies and Rhubarb becomes suddenly famous as the cat that inherited a baseball team and a bunch of dough, she lawyers up and challenges the will in court.

Meanwhile, after some initial resistance to playing for a cat, the Loons adopt Rhubarb as a sort of good-luck charm, and they suddenly start winning. In fact, they seem headed to the World Series, with Rhubarb present at every game. And the public simply cannot get enough of this cat. Many of them are even intent on introducing their female cats to him, in hopes of getting a litter of kittens fathered by the wealthy feline. And then there is the, uh, unfortunate incident involving a certain intimacy between Rhubarb and a female cat—the incident that is broadcast live via radio to a large and rapt audience and gives the yellow tom a whole new reputation.

Truly, there are more twists in this plot than I could possibly mention in one short review.

Our verdict

Others have described Rhubarb as zany and bawdy, and it is both. We weren’t bothered by the bawdiness, but some readers might be, so heads up. There’s nothing explicit, but sex is frequently just on the periphery (or on the radio, as in the aforementioned unfortunate incident). We must also mention that this is a book very much of its time (the 1940s), and there is a certain amount of casual racism, sexism, and so on that we did find … oh, let’s call it annoying. Overall, though, we found Rhubarb to be a pretty good, and funny, read. We enjoyed Eric Yeager’s quick-wittedness (a person would have to be pretty sharp to deal with everything he gets drawn into, all because of a cat). We also enjoyed the nutty judge and the even nuttier psychiatrists who try to figure out whether Rhubarb is a normal cat.

We found plenty of laugh-out-loud moments in this book, but some of the humor also fell flat for us. This, we think, is a function of time: some things that were funny 70 years are simply less funny today. Honestly, we think the movie version has held up better over time than the book has … and the movie is more family friendly and has more baseball.

But we still think Rhubarb is worth a read, especially if you’re into fast-paced zaniness with some bawdiness on the side! There is a Kindle version available, and you can also find used copies for under $10.

A note on the "Paws Up" system: Miss C gives either one or two paws up. One paw is for a good read; two paws is for a great read. She never gives three or four paws because that would require her to lie on her back...and Miss C does not do that!

The link below is an Amazon Associates link. If you purchase the book through this link, old SoLT and I could get some coin for our kibble account. Thank you!