Purrfection! ( )

Very affecting picture book for the cat-owning parents! Tells the story of a very old cat, near death, and his interactions with a new kitten. Families who have a very old cat will appreciate this picture book, which describes some of the infirmities of feline old age. (If only it had also depicted giving fluids!) ( )

not in CLAN

The Grannyman by Judy Schachner is about an old cat, Simon, and a new kitten, Tink. If you've read the more recent book, Bits & Pieces, Tink is the old cat now charged with teaching a new kitten the ways of the house.

Simon, the geriatric Siamese, is a realistically rendered cat. There's a scene where he climbs up onto the stove to warm his arthritic joints that really hits home. Caligula in her last months of life did exactly that, nearly daily.

Now of course this book and Bits & Pieces to a lesser degree, is about human companions transitioning from the life of one cat into the life of another by welcoming in a kitten. In Schachner's books the transitions seem to go easily. She coats over the hissing, bopping, growing, fighting and hiding that often goes with introducing new cats. Certainly we went through it with Caligula and Tortuga and now we're going through it again with Tortuga and Salmon. ( )

This book brings to mind a lot of the pets I've had that embodied the same qualities as Simon. I've watched a lot of pets go from spry young things to mature, stately animals and high-ranking members of our family to feeble and elderly shadows of their former selves reluctantly in need of a lot of care, but I've also been fortunate enough to see the affect of a kitten or another young animal on older pets. Sometimes, they want nothing to do with the new animal, but other times a nurturing caretaker emerges from an animal that no one would have suspected had a paternal bone in its body. It's interesting in any instance and this book captures that wonderfully. This is probably my favorite book by Judy Schachner because it tugs at me in a very personal way. ( )