You Can Take the Cat out of Slough . . .

by Chris Pascoe

You can take a cat to water but you can't make it think.

Last summer, Chris Pascoe decided to do something monumentally stupid. He decided to stay at home with his two-and-a-half-year-old daughter Maya and disaster-prone tabby Birmingham, Brum for short. And also with Brum's rather vicious live-in-partner-girl-cat Sammy, who he intended mainly not to wake. Let biting cats lie. Why he believed time with Brum would, with all the years of contrary evidence, be quality he's not at all sure . . .

The result is a series of tales of death-defying feats.  Paddling pools, gazebos, small birds and kitchens - all aspects of normal life can take a dangerous turn with the presence of Brum. Pascoe tries to train the tabby, restrain the tabby and even researches the stories of other danger cats in a bid to keep Brum alive a bit longer. And amazingly, despite the efforts of his exuberant two-year-old with a plastic mallet, he still is.

Genres: Humor

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Ocean]

Laugh out loud funny! Perfect and short little book for any cat lover. I'll probably get to the first one in a bit as well.

[Fiona]

Not as good as the first but still a good read

[Cheryl]

I was in the mood for something fluffy after the book I just finished and the heavy book I just started. This definitely qualifies as fluffy -- it mostly focuses on a derpy cat named Brum (Birmingham) who gets into pickles on the regular. It also involves the writer being a stay-at-home-dad to a toddler daughter who gets into predicaments (the dad, not the daughter) involving gazebos, furniture moving, pubs, and milkmen.

It was amusing but not LOL material. The cat was a cat -- if you have had a cat, you understand that the stories are real but the stories of Sammy the cat are equally real. It was a nice bit of fluff and a quick read.

[Clarissa Brincat]

I enjoyed ‘A Cat Called Birmingham’. This one less so. Yes, it made me laugh several times, but at some point I lost my patience with the book/its author. It gets repetitive and I couldn’t tolerate the parts where he muses about Brum’s future demise - who in their right mind would want to think about such things? Not me anyway. Sorry Chris Pascoe.

[Jan]

Hilarious. Had me crying with laughter.

[Simon Fenwick]

Even more hilarious than the first book, A Cat Called Birmingham!

[Susan]

This is one of a set of two books about the author's cat Birmingham (Brum) and it is intensely funny and can be read repeatedly and still retain all hilarity.

[Hailee]

Just as good as the first one. Don't know why I waited so long to read it.