I am triaging my books, those I don't want to read, those I won't have enough time left to read and those I think I will read. Among almost 40 years of books in my house collected by my clan I ran across the cutest little book called Jennie by Paul Gallico. Probably bought by my mom when she lived with me.
Both my dear mother and my last wife were/are among the sweetest people on earth and both loved kitties. So when I'm done with this book I'm going to give it to my ex wife.
These two paragraphs at the beginning of the book are so sweet and articulate I want to read them. The book is about a young boy changed into a stray cat and Befriended by the indomitable Jennie, who initiates him into the lore of the London streets.
"If he was in bed, then perhaps he was sick, and if he was sick, perhaps his mother would be with him more when she came home and found out. Maybe now they would even give him the wish he had had for so long and let him have a cat all of his own to keep in his room and sleep curled up at the foot of his bed, and perhaps even crawl under the covers with him and snuggle in his arms on nights that were cold.
He had wanted a cat ever since he could remember, which was many years ago at the age of four, when he had gone to stay on a farm near Garrard's cross, and had been taken into the kitchen and shown a basket full of kittens, orange and white balls of fluff, and the ginger colored mother who beamed with pride and until her face was quite as broad as it was long, and licked them over with her tongue one after the other. He was allowed to put his hand on her. She was soft and warm, and a queer kind of throbbing was going on inside of her, which later he learned was called purring, and meant that she was comfortable and happy, from then on he dearly wished for a cat of his own. |
