Cat Connoisseur: I Don't Want a Cool Cat by Emma Dodd

I DON'T WANT A COOL CAT.

A TREAT-ME-LIKE-A-FOOL CAT.

As every cat owner has learned, there are as many cat personalities as there are cats, and our little would-be cat fancier is not being finicky as the proverbial feline when she sets out to find a perfect personality fit for her own pet.

Our little girl, with her pink dress and neat Mary Jane slippers, knows that a haughty Siamese will hog her bed and leave her the cast-off cat bed. That's not the cat for her!

She knows she doesn't want a fluffy, stuffy, foofy cat, or an orange-striper Tom spoiling for a fight. She definitely does not want a feed-me-now greedy cat, so stout he gets stuck in the pet door on the way to the food bowl. And nix to that prowly-scowly- yowly cat with a cat-itude.

There's got to be the right cat out there for a girl with an empty lap.

NOT A SCRATCH OR SCRAP CAT.

A CURL-UP-IN-MY-LAP CAT--

A GLAD-WHEN-I-COME-HOME CAT!

In the aesthetically delightful Emma Dodd's artistic hands, her latest, I Don't Want a Cool Cat!, (Little, Brown, 2010) is a fun and funny lesson in cat selection. Dodd's delicious illustrations, done up in clever double-page spreads with dramatic changes in perspective and perfect caricatures of the kitty types she describes, are spot-on in generating laughs, even without the text. But the rhythmic couplets, doubly appealing with their internal rhymes presented one line per page, are a joy to read, silently or aloud.

Great for story times or even for beginners to read solo, this one works well with Dodd's earlier companion book, I Don't Want a Posh Dog, for a pet-perfect pair.