I & Claudius: Travels With My Cat

by Clare de Vries

Clare de Vries fulfills her dream of traveling the States when she decides to quit London with her ailing, beloved cat, Claudius, for a final fling (he wouldn't be allowed back into the UK without a six-month quarantine, so they decide to spend his final months on the road...)

It was a bumpy, unpredictable ride from the dubious glamours of Manhattan down to the Appalachians, from the Smoky Mountains to Nashville. Graceland led to New Orleans where Voodoo did more for Claudius's kidneys than the vet could. Claude (to his friends) enjoyed Cajun music, Texas rodeo and trekked the Grand Canyon, indulging in Kentucky Fried Chicken along the way (hell, his days were numbered--might as well make the best of them...) At last, the Pacific wind in his whiskers, Claude wrapped up his five-month sojourn with Clare on a boat outside San Francisco. The characters along the way were a startling crew, from brown bear to astronaut, from psychic to porn star. And, as crazy as the idea may have seemed to start with, and crazier still to have followed through, at the story's center lay something deep and real about our dreams and loyalties and about going away to find out who we really are.

Genres: Nonfiction, Travel, Cats, Animals, Memoir, Biography

313 pages, Hardcover

First published October 20, 1999

About the author

Clare de Vries was in love with cats before she had her children. Her first book, I & Claudius, (published by Bloomsbury) related her road trip travels around America with her Burmese cat Claudius. Her second book, Of Cats And Kings, was about her journey through Burma and Thailand and was also published by Bloomsbury. A freelance journalist and copy writer, she now lives in London with her husband and two little girls Coco and Kitty.

Reviews

[Diane in Australia · Rating 3 out of 5]

After Clare's mum died suddenly from cancer, she took a long look at her job, and her life in England, and decided to opt out of both for awhile, and go on a road trip across the USA. Her main problem was that she had a 19-year-old Burmese cat, Claudius, to consider. Her options were; she could postpone the trip until after he dies, she could leave him in England knowing he might die before she got back, or she could take him with her. If she takes him with her, it will be a one-way trip for Claude, as she often calls him, as he could not return to England without facing several months of quarantine, and Clare will not subject him to that. So, they go together. They start in New York and head for California.

This book has gotten some criticism from cat lovers because they see it as her 'dragging her old cat' around the USA for selfish reasons. I thought a lot about this, as I am a cat lover, and I've shared my life with many, many cats over the years. I guess my take on this is "Live, and let live." It's obvious she loves Claude, and it seems he is crazy about her, too. Claude has been her cat since she was ten years old, so, it might be fair to say she knows him better than anyone else. She made the decision to have this journey with him, and let him see the Pacific Ocean, and that's good enough for me.

Just be aware this is about a single 28 year old London girl plonked down in the USA back in the '90s ... she doesn't spend her weekends going to Sunday School, if you get my drift.

3 Stars = I liked the book. I enjoyed it. I'm glad I read it.

[Natalie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. My book club hated it. I decided I hated my book club and quit! :) I love cats, love travel, and love de Vries' sense of humour. My book club was a rather humourless bunch.

[Karmen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Selection from my favorite thrift store. The cover art and subject matter hooked me.

Unfortunately, even allowing for the age of the book (published 1999), the author is too inane. I truly love books, travel, and animals (in that order), it is very difficult for me to outright state: DO NOT BUY or READ this book unless you're a teenager.

[Heather · Rating 2 out of 5]

an autobiographical tale about an Englishwoman driving across the U.S. with her nearly 20-year-old Burmese cat, Claudius. (Notice how I snuck in some SE Asian content there? Burmese cat?) I like how she and Claude communicate and it's an interesting trip, but she makes some really risky decisions and is lucky to come through unscathed.

[Sarah Sammis · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a bittersweat story. When I first started reading the book I thought: Oh my god it's Georgia Nicholson all grown up. As Clare de Vries makes her journey westward her writing matures. The trip gave her time to say goodbye to her cat and to do some well needed growing up.

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bereavement is a great catalyst for change. It makes us stop and reconsider what we want from life and in the case of a sudden loss, that sense of ‘do it now’ urgency is enhanced. Clare de Vries lost her mother very suddenly to pancreatic cancer, looked at her job and her life in London and wanted out of both. The problem is that sometimes when you want a change, you need someone to keep you company and your friends and relatives don’t want the same things you want or aren’t available when you need them. How could she find the perfect travel companion? Enter Claudius – the perfect loyal friend to take on a road trip across the USA. ‘I and Claudius‘ is the story of their road trip – and it’s fantastic.

De Vries describes what she was aiming for as a Thelma and Louise experience – without the rape and the killings of course. What makes this book different from most buddy road trip stories is that Claudius isn’t a man – he’s a 19-year-old chocolate Burmese cat who’s been Clare’s buddy since she was ten years old. Clare could do the ‘sensible’ thing and postpone her trip until Claudius dies or she could do the unthinkable and pass him on to someone else to look after and go on her own. But the concept of the life-changing road trip has never been about doing sensible things. Claudius (or Claude as she most often calls him) is an old boy and he won’t last forever. If she leaves him behind there’s a strong chance he’ll die alone with her thousands of miles away. If she takes him with her, she can’t come back until he dies as she’ll not subject him to quarantine. So they set off knowing that for one of them at least, this has to be a one-way trip.

Starting in New York, the aim is to make it to the West Coast. Pacing the trip is never going to be easy; go too fast and they’ll be left wondering what to do; go to slow and Claude might not make it.

Claude and Clare have a remarkable relationship and you can’t help but love the pair of them. Does she behave utterly irresponsibly rather a lot of the time – absolutely. Does she smuggle him and his litter box into hotels with ‘No Pets Allowed’ signs on the door – of course. Does she cringe now more than a decade later when reading about the drugs and inappropriate men – very probably. Does Claude get to ride on the passenger seat without a harness or even sitting on her lap and is that really rather dangerous – yep, you bet. But doesn’t everyone who has ever loved a cat dream of taking them traveling with them as an equal and not a fur-bag in a cat box? Don’t we all long for a cat that exhibits all the ‘stay with you and not wander off when they feel like it’ characteristics of a dog even whilst we celebrate their independent ways?

Claude and Clare break all the rules – he strolls around the plane when they fly over, walks the streets with her, gets smuggled into museums and national parks in a backpack and stays home in the hotels when she goes out partying with dodgy blokes. This is a pre-9/11 book when security in the USA was at best rather lax. Clare and Claude spend a lot of time getting told off but they also come across some incredible examples of kindness to strangers. People they meet pass them on to friends and family allowing them to eke out their budget by mixing homestays with cheap motels and the occasional blow-out hotel.

The world can be divided into those who love cats and those who don’t – fortunately enough of the former exist for Clare and Claude to get away with lots of naughtiness. One thing that you can’t fail to pick up when reading this – even if you think de Vries is utterly certifiably bonkers – is that she adores Claude and he gives every impression that he’s just as smitten with her.

The inside cover of my copy has pictures of Clare and Claude on their travels. Curled up by the car, standing beneath a road sign saying ‘Welcome to Claude’ and on his last legs, standing in front of the Golden Gate Bridge. There’s nothing to suggest he’s not having a great time. This book is a tale of equals – as much about Claude as it is about Clare. It’s not all plain sailing – loads of stuff goes wrong. She ships a sports car to the USA only for it to break down on the first day. They get thrown out of hotels and have to sleep in the car which she narrowly misses getting stolen by a couple of good looking con men. But all those things she can deal with – it’s when Claude gets sick (which happens often) that we feel Clare’s pain.

If you’ve ever had an old cat you’ll have gone through the horrible situation of having to decide when they’ve reached the end. We know this story has to end with Claude’s death – there is no other way it can play out and we’re told that from the beginning. We also know that there’s a high probability that Clare will have to take the decision of when enough is enough. We’ve been through it with three elderly cats and it hurts like hell. I’m choked just typing this but I was utterly weepy reading the last chapter of I and Claudius. I’ve seldom read a book where I could so totally relate to the emotions that the writer was going through and I blubbed like a baby.

[Jude Grindvoll · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is quite possibly the worst travelogue I have ever read! Or nearly read I should say since I gave up after three chapters. The narrator is a combination of ludicrous (I can forgive people who talk to their pets; I cannot forgive an idiot who narrates an imaginary response from said pet to the reader), obnoxious and just downright rude. The way de Vries interacts with people within the few chapters I did read was nothing short of arrogant and that is unforgivable. I'm not entirely surprised her only travel companion was feline. I can't imagine any human wanting to spend an extended period of time with someone who Hannibal Lecter would no doubt devour due to severe lack of manners!

[Olga Chronics · Rating 1 out of 5]

I thought I would love this book, because all the subjects are so interesting to me. I started reading it, but it couldn’t finish it, which is a very rare occurrence for me. I felt like the author was trying too hard to be funny - she mashed up too many written styles together, and often used the ‘chich lit’ style of comparisons too often in places where it didn’t really add to the scene. Sometimes she was too descriptive, sometimes not enough. The whole thing where she gives dialogue lines to the dog is used miles too much, and often in places where there is already too much confusing dialogue. I gave the book away to the library because I didn’t even want it on my bookshelf.

[Amanda Morrison · Rating 1 out of 5]

It's rare that I can't finish a book.
But I had a hard time getting past the part where she had her car 'shipped' from England to the USA even knowing how impractical said car was for a road trip. I couldn't relate the narrator. What a spoiled brat.
The cat was cool though...

[Lucy_van_pelt · Rating 2 out of 5]

Spoiled brat travels through America with her cat.

[Vicci · Rating 2 out of 5]

The cat's good, but the author/narrator is the most annoying, conceited person I have ever had the displeasure to have to 'spend time' with.

[H.S. Contino · Rating 1 out of 5]

I couldn’t finish this one— which is rare for me. I only got as far as the 60-something year old friend of a friend who was talking about having sex with a 15 year old. Not the book for me!

[Sara · Rating 1 out of 5]

Absolutely hate this book, because it's trash, on a million levels, horrible main character/author, overall having a horrible experience reading is 10/10 would recommend to never touch this horrible book, but the cover art of my striped version is really pretty

[Ren · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's often been compared to the Bridget Jones books and I have to agree. Clare has a different way of doing things...

[Victoria · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read with memories of my Burmese car Sar. He was a wonderful cat. As is the one in this novel. Great read.

[Rogue Reader · Rating 2 out of 5]

Taking one's cat on a roadtrip in its last months of life. A little too precious for me though I dearly wanted to read another Clare de Vries.

[J.T. Wilson · Rating 1 out of 5]

The cat and the brat. Bridget Jones-ish London media type and fashionista Clare de Vries attempts to overcome her grief at her mother's death by travelling the US coast-to-coast but, in the absence of a willing companion, takes her cat along with her instead. This is the sort of thing my cat would hate: long periods of travel and having to get used to a new home every couple of nights are not usually preferred options for this most conservative of pet. Claudius seems to deal with being carried around in a bag like Paris Hilton's chihuahua pretty well; however, age is catching up to the senior cat (19 at the start of the trip).

Alright, look. When I read a memoir of this sort I'm prepared to accept the possibility, or even probability, that some of the events are exaggerated or outright made-up, so I can handle scenes like de Vries being offered a job in Texas after some inane contributions to a meeting. I can also accept that the author might engage in some conversation with her cat and imagine the cat's responses: hey, what pet owner doesn't do this, right? You can understand the peculiar decision to take the cat: faced with multiple tragedies and adrift from her family in the States, Claudius represents a familiar touchstone to his owner in a world where she's floating uncertainly, and, having been with her since she was 10, an increasingly rare link to her childhood.

Willingness to understand the logic or to take the narrative with a pinch of salt, however, doesn't make it any better. For a start, it's bitty as anything - it often feels like scrappy, unedited diary entries - and the lack of any driving motive or goal, combined with the repetitive nature, makes it dissatisfying. There's no real destination in 'On the Road', Kerouac's genre-defining piece, either, but at least Kerouac made travel in the jazz age seem like a thrilling, exhilirating experience and has the magnetic Dean Moriarty at its centre. Nobody as charismatic appears here: de Vries rarely comes across as a likeable person. I'm sure she is, but it's not immediately apparent in her work as she flees gambling debts, roams clothes stores, guzzles margheritas and gets into confrontations with all the grace and dignity of Joanna Lumley's 'Absolutely Fabulous' character.

Finally... well... this book came out in 1999, and I know that there's been a lot of water under the bridge since then, but did we really talk like this 17 years ago? There's two uses of the word 'poof'. Native Americans are referred to repeatedly as 'Indians' - this feels careless*. Then there's a ghastly scene in a Thai in Louisiana, which I will now excerpt. The author is in conversation with an Asian waitress who has just told her, apropos of nothing, that she is trans.

"Are you all like this?"
"Trannies? Yus." (So when she was a boy she fancied women and now she's a girl she fancies men...)
"Do you, ahem, have a toolbox, so to speak?" [...]
"Yes I do." She blinks and looks down, an Asian transvestite version of Prinny Di in her coy days. "But I took the pills to make my breasts grow."

Where to start? On the next page, [In] the loos, I ask one of the older girls - big blonde hair, a rhinestone top and lots of make-up - how she decides which bathroom to use? Does she alternative to make it more fun, as strictly speaking she can use both? She gives me a filthy look and exits. It's embarassing to read this; I've seen more tolerant handling of trans issues in 'Some Like it Hot'. In short: good cat, but would recommend other 'me and my cat' books on the market, i.e. almost any other.

* - I'd have anticipated 'Native American', a phrase which the author starts to use later in the book - albeit still interchangeably with 'Indian'. The preferred term is, it seems, 'American Indian'.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

I knew I had to read this book after spotting it at the library. It’s about a young lady from England who takes a road trip across the US with her cat, Claudius. Now, Clare is a pretty quirky woman and it shows in her writing, but her love for Claudius and the back story of her dealing with her mother’s death make the book solid. Some parts do get a little repetitive & boring (I can’t count how many times she describes checking into hotels & having to hide the cat from them) and I can’t believe some of the people she gets involved with on the journey (a stalker!).

[Grachy Iraheta · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love this book. My mom bought it for me at a yard sale, & I'm glad she did. I started to read it & tried to get into the story & got completely pulled into it! I felt close to the characters in the book & I also imagined the situations very vividly. I thought it was very humorous! I liked the feel-good mood throughout the book which Clare & Claudius shared even through all the trials they had on their trip. Once again, I love this book!!!

[Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this book years ago, but took it with me on my recent vacation. I'm most of the way through it, and it's a funny and easy read for leisure.

And i finally finished it on a road trip last week! Hooray!

[Patricia levitan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is just what the title says. A young woman decides to take a cross country car trip with her cat which she is loves dearly. It is a charming read.

[Jenn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cleverly written travel memoir. It's a real treat for those who love both travel and cats.

[Rachel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Refreshing style, enjoyable on the whole. Became pretty annoyed about the KFC and the Devils Canyon parts though. I did begin to wonder if she was really too stupid to own a pet.

[Kristen Neirinck]

This is a hilarious and moving tale, full of the beautiful contradictions it means to be human as well as the steady mystery of cat-dom

[Cindy May]

A great road trip story! (although I can't imagine taking my cat on the road with me).