Cat-alog: The Diary of a Killer Cat and The Return of the Killer Cat by Anne Fine

"Oh, Tuffy," fretted Ellie, giving me the Big Farewell Squeeze. "Oh, Tuffy, we'll be away for a whole week!"

A whole week? Magic words! A whole week of sunning myself in the flower beds without Ellie's mother shrieking, "Tuffy, get out of there! You're flattening whole patches!"

A whole week of lolling about on top of the TV without Ellie's father's endless nagging. "Tuffy! Move your tail! It's dangling over the picture!"

And best all, a whole week of not being scooped up and shoved in Next-Door's old straw baby basket and stroked and petted by Ellie and her soppy friend Melanie.

But Tuffy's halcyon week turns out to be not what he expects. First the cat-sitter isn't the usual sweet Mrs. Tanner, but Vicar Barnham, no cat lover himself, whose first words to Tuffy are "Off those cushions, Tuffy. I don't think you're supposed to be lolling about on the sofa!"

(So what was I supposed to be doing? muses Tuffy. Mopping the floor? Tapping away on the computer? Digging the garden?)

When the Vicar stonewalls on opening another can of cat food until Tuffy finishes the moldy lumps of yesterday's leftovers, Tuffy rigs the bathroom window latch so he can go and come at will, and takes off with his free-range buddies to riffle the trash cans for Moo Goo Gai Pan behind the neighborhood Chinese bistro.

Next morning, as the Vicar returns and tries to chase Tuffy down, he climbs a tree and Barnham's attempt to reach him catapults him into dear Melanie's pillow-filled basket. Assuming her prayers for a kitty have been answered from above, Melanie dresses Tuffy in baby clothes, names him Janet, and feeds him splendidly on tuna and fresh cream daily. It's a better-than-hoped-for week for the killer cat, until Tuffy has to prove to his feline friends that his overdressed and overfed self is the real Tuffy, not Melanie's obese Pussywussykins! And when Ellie returns, will Tuffy be stuck with the role of Miss Soppy Melanie's Baby MunchyWunchyKins Janet forever?

For cat-loving beginning chapter readers, The Return of the Killer Cat and the earlier The Diary of a Killer Cat are two cat-with- attitude tales which are just the cat's whiskers for independent reading. Abundantly illustrated with Steve Cox's comic drawings, these books, full of fun and flying cat fur, will suit young readers purr-fectly.