Cats In The Belfry
By: Doreen Tovey / Narrated By: Joy Gelardi
Length: 3 hrs and 39 mins
If you love cats…
…you’ll really like Cats in the Belfry by Doreen Tovey.
Sure, as an audiobook, there are a couple of editing glitches: the narrator, Joy Gelardi, repeats a messed up line here, and you can hear a page being turned there, but hey! I got this on sale, so I was willing to overlook that. Besides, Gelardi narrates this well, with charming tones, and both she and Tovey seem to know the mind of a cat. In all their cunning, petty, how-did-I-get-stuck-up-this-tree glory.
Don’t expect much of a story here. Cats in the Belfry reads, or perhaps I should say listens like a bio/memoir rather than fiction. With fiction, you’d expect story, maybe a bit of a plot. Rather, this is a series of anecdotes about life with three cats in particular.
All they were looking to do was a) try to fill the hole the death their beloved pet squirrel left, and b) try to regain some sort of balance between their lives and the lives of the mice that began overrunning their home once said squirrel died, he the keeper of nuts and bread. They figured with a cat, perhaps a few swift and sure executions would send the proper message. Enter not just a cat, but a Siamese.
I’ve only known one Siamese, and boy was she a talker. And here, the Siamese are talkers, squawkers, yowlers, and howlers. We get inside their little heads as they try to proclaim that they are being misjudged, mistreated, misunderstood! (Ever try to dose a cat with meds? He or she will loudly announce their displeasure at such ill treatment.)
There are little stories of proud hunters who stalk and destroy… soggy leaves. Stories about how they hunt fur coats, expensive panty hose, unattended cacti. They dig holes for the fun of it; they get stuck up trees because the misbehaving kitten down the street made them do it.
The book kinda goes against the grain in that, for a while, not only are their cats not neutered, one is specifically bred. I mean, huh? Considering the pet over-population problem, I just rather groaned when I heard that. But aside from my silly quibbling, there’s plenty here to make you smile if you’ve ever lived with a cat, Siamese or otherwise. We all know the crash, bang, and screech that comes with the “lithe and graceful” creatures navigating a not-so cluttered counter.
While I can’t recommend paying full-price for this audiobook, it is after all not even 4 hours, I can tell you it’s a pleasant way to spend that amount of time. Maybe on sale you could pick up the audiobook. Even though a few mice, birds, and shrews were harmed to bring you the stories, it’s not too shudder-inducing, and it is mostly, quite frankly, chucklesome indeed!
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