More Kindles and Clowders: Cat-alog of More Great Cat Books

Leslie Anne Ivory's Everything I Know About Life I Learned from My Cat is filled with her exquisite paintings of cats which showcase those quirks of the cat personality which make them an everlasting joy to observe. The text humorously celebrates these quirks. For example, for a cat "personal space is good." Cats can be big snugglers, but they like their own place and space, and when they wish to snooze or watch a bird alone, they let you know! Cats also have an adaptable quality to love anyone who loves them ("love the one you're with), but they also have a loyalty to place ("life is as good as the view") which values home no matter where they roam.

Jane Yolen's Meow: Cat Stories from Around the World, lavishly illustrated by Hala Wittwer, features stories and rhymes about cats from such diverse places as Tibet, Scotland, Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Chippewa lands of North America, who provide just one version of "Why the Cat Falls on Her Feet." In the chapter titled "What People Say about Cats," we find such sayings as "In a cat's eye, all things belong to cats," (England) or "'Tis easy to teach the cat the way to the butter churn." (Scotland)

Sue Stainton's The Lighthouse Cat, exquisitely illustrated by Anne Mortimer, tells the story of a gray-striped cat who turns up in a box of onions and potatoes ferried from the mainland and is adopted by a lonely lighthouse keeper. Named Mackerel, the faithful cat nightly trudges up and down the many steps with the keeper to tend the 24-candle lantern at the top of the lighthouse. One dark night a fierce storm destroys the lantern, endangering passing ships. Quickly, Mackerel calls twelve of his fellow cats from the village to the top of the lighthouse, and when the clouds break, their glowing green eyes reflect the moonlight and save the ships sailing through the treacherous seas below. Breathtaking pictures and a hold-your-breath adventure make this story of a loyal cat as satisfying as a kitten in your lap.

Jan Brett's Comet's Nine Lives takes the reader on a picturesque tour of Nantucket Island as Comet, a clueless young cat, imprudently loses eight of his nine lives when his curiosity leads him to investigate all the delightful places on Nantucket. Luckily for Comet, the storm which takes his eighth life washes him through an open door and into a room where he finds a green-eyed calico lighthouse cat and a home where he wants to spend the rest of his life.