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Kissanpentu Djibi

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Nuori kissanpentu hukutetaan jokeen, mutta se jää henkiin ja päätyy maa­tilalle kasvamaan koiraemon hoivissa.

Djibi elää kesynä ihmisten keskuudessa ja villinä metsässä. Tämä kissa valitsee itse polkunsa.

"Kissanpentu Djibi" (Djibi das Kätzchen) on Felix Saltenin viimeinen romaani, pienen kissan riipaiseva elämäkerta.

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1948

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About the author

Felix Salten

242 books115 followers
There is more than one author with this Name.

Felix Salten was an Austrian writer. He was born Siegmund Salzmann in Budapest, Hungary. When he was three weeks old, his family moved to Vienna, Austria. Many Jews were immigrating into the city in the late 19th century because Vienna had finally granted full citizenship to Jews in 1867.

When his father went bankrupt, Felix had to quit school and begin working in an insurance agency. He also began submitting poems and book reviews to journals. He became part of the Young Vienna movement (Jung Wien) and soon received work as a full-time art and theater critic in the Vienna press. In 1901 he founded Vienna's first, short-lived literary cabaret. In 1900 he published his first collection of short stories. He was soon publishing, on an average, one book a year, of plays, short stories, novels, travel books, and essay collections. He also wrote for nearly all the major newspapers of Vienna. He wrote film scripts and librettos for operettas. In 1927 he became president of the Austrian P.E.N. club. (acronym of the International Association of Poets and Playwrights, Essayists and Editors, and Novelists)

His most famous work is Bambi, which he wrote in 1923. It was translated into English in 1928 and became a Book-of-the-Month Club hit. In 1933, he sold the film rights to Sidney Franklin for $1,000, who later transferred the rights to the Walt Disney studios. Disney released its movie based on Bambi in 1942.

Life in Austria became perilous for a prominent Jew in the 1930s. Adolf Hitler had Salten's books banned in 1936. Two years later (1938), after Austria had become part of Germany, Salten moved to Zurich, Switzerland, where he lived until his death.

He was married to the actress Ottilie Metzl, and had two children: Paul and Anna-Katherina. He wrote another book based on the character Bambi, titled Bambi's Children: The Story of a Forest Family, 1939. His stories "Perri" and "The Hound of Florence" inspired the Disney films Perri and The Shaggy Dog.

Salten is considered to be the author of the erotic novel Josephine Mutzenbacher, the fictional autobiography of a Vienna prostitute, which was published in 1906.

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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
Profile Image for Casey Anderson.
805 reviews22 followers
March 16, 2016
This was seriously one of the worst books I have ever read. It's like Game of Thrones for pets. Except without good writing, world building, developed characters etc. I know it's a kids book, I read them all the time. I like them. THis was just...not good.
His other works had been compared to things like Watership Down. I expected something more.
It was just awful.
Profile Image for Yenta Knows.
634 reviews2 followers
January 29, 2022
The cover illustration and the publisher’s synopsis present this book as a charming animal tale — a children’s book.

It’s not. It opens with the kitten, Djibi, nearly being drowned to death, escaping only because she is rescued by a boy — who, after some weeks of caring for the kitten, provokes her, grows furious at her scratches, and attempts to kill the kitten he rescued.

Djibi moves on to the home of a teacher, where many adventures with the dog Tasso, the canary Hansi, and a slew of visitors, canine, feline, and human, ensue.

The most striking aspect is the ambiguity of every character. Djibi is a caring mother and often an affectionate pet. But she is distant at times, saddening the sentimental teacher. And she takes joy in catching and killing mice.

The teacher’s wife loves her husband, but calls him a “wet rag” at times. The teacher is very kind and loving and understanding, but he is caught in the no-solution trap of human-animal relations. For example: he receives a canary as a gift from a student. He proposes at one point that the canary be freed, but his realistic wife points out that a tropical canary would quickly die. He keeps the canary, though in a larger cage.

Spoiler alert — Djibi is killed in the end by the farmer, a character who has always hated her independence. The teacher and his wife — who have tried to be friends with the farmer, a one-time student of the teacher’s — cut off all contact then, telling him “From now on we are complete strangers.”

“All this fuss for a measly cat!” he murmurs.

And these words end the book, allowing the brutish farmer the last word.

Published in 1945, this appears to be Salten’s last book. By then, “stripped of his Austrian citizenship by the Nazis, he spent his final years ‘lonely and in despair’ in Zurich and died in 1945, like Bambi, with no safe place to call home.” (https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021...).
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Profile Image for James.
113 reviews1 follower
August 30, 2025
This book consists of 2 chapters. The first is 16 pages; the second is the remainder of the book, 167 pages! This is not a very enjoyable story. It’s very violent & the human characters are complete drips, every one of them. These people had no business having pets because the husband, although loving, was clueless as to how to care for them properly. I’ve read 3 of Salten’s books: Bambi, Bambi’s Children & Fifteen Rabbits. This is nowhere near the quality or uniqueness of those books. I suspect it’s probably because of the human characters who seem to have more of a story than the animals. It’s nothing but a relentless circle of unfortunate events. The book is written as a children’s book but the events herein are disturbing & do not set any good examples for the children reading it.
Profile Image for Laiba Basit.
Author 4 books10 followers
December 15, 2022
This book was like an old friend; like faint memories coming to the surface of your mind. I loved it. I laughed, I cried, and I feared. This is one of the best books I'll ever read!

My rating: 8 stars.
8 stars for everything! Can't really divide it..

Book number 326!
Profile Image for Lila  Mable.
98 reviews4 followers
March 1, 2024
Not my favorite book by this author, but it had interesting debates about the relationship between humans and pets, specifically cats. I can't say I agree with every view of the author but he had some good points.
Djibi's personalities seemed to switch and flip every chapter, but she is a cat so I shouldn't be surprised. I liked reading about the relationships between the different pets of the household.
Profile Image for Arwen Baggins.
113 reviews6 followers
December 29, 2025
Spolier

If this is the same book I think it is, I can safely say I did not like it. (I don't remember the title, but it was this author.)

It was violent and sad, and just sort of boring. It wasn't a charming story about a cat and what it does, it was a compilation of mundane, often scary events.

Also:

THE CAT DIES AT THE END!
It was stealing eggs, and the neighbor had told it's owner that if it didn't stop he was going to kill the cat, and it didn't, so he does. IT DIES!

Which is quite awful. He killed the cat! The main character! The feline who's wellfair I had become invested in despite it's slightly annoying tempermant!

(At the same time, I didn't like how the neighbour was completely villianized. I mean, the doctor should have taken more care to keep the cat from stealing eggs. Should the neighbor have killed it? No, I think that was extreme. But still, the eggs belong to the neighbor, and the owner had been warned. You broke the cat from hunting your pet budgie, break the cat from stealing eggs. I don't think the neighbor should have killed the cat, but the owner should have done more.)

Despite all this, I still hated that the cat died at the end. It was just so depressing and sad, and sort of made everything that happened before seem pointless. I FOLLOWED THE LIFE OF THIS CAT THROUGH ALL IT'S HARDSHIPS AND TRIALS UNTIL IT REACHED THE DOCTOR'S HOUSE AND SEEMED LIKE IT WAS GOING TO HAVE A PEACEFUL LIFE, AND THEN IT JUST DIES? Why was this book even written? Why are you writing a story about the cat, just to kill it at the end? This was such a dumb book.

To make it even worse, the cover and title make it sound like a cute, sweet cat story. It is not. A kid could pick this up looking for a heartwarming little book, and instead get emotionally traumatized.

Not only does our protagonist puss get killed, but her whole life is sort of stressful to read about. She's almost drowned as a kitten, but is rescued by a boy. But after she scratches him, he gets rid of her, so she runs into the woods, gets hunted by a weasel, and then has a hard life until she's taken in by the doctor. She's ok for a while, but then she later has a kitten WHICH DIES AS SOON AS IT'S BORN. Come on, how tragic is that, especially for a kid to read? Then shortly after this she dies. If I recall, she gets hit by a shovel. Which is a rather grusome end for the main cat of a book.

I think this book was written just to be upsetting to children. Why else would it have such a sad ending, while at the same time being designed to look kid-friendly?

Also, the book didn't really make sense narratively.

Near the beginning, the cat talks. The reader knows what its saying, the book actually has the animals speaking and saying stuff. Like: "Don't eat me!" hissed the cat. "But you look so delicious!" snarled the weasel.

Then this is randomly dropped and never used again. Why was it a talking animal book at the start, and then we never again get anything from the cat but meows? I really don't know what was going on there.

In summary, this was just a really terrible book, in pretty much every way.

I would not reccomend it.
Profile Image for Christine.
7,265 reviews577 followers
December 11, 2010
Everyone knows Felix Salten because of Bambi: A Life in the Woods, a good book. Few people, however, know this book.

Jibby is the story of, well, Jibby. It ties more into human and animals than Bambi does. In some ways, it draws more from Black Beauty or the excellent Lad: A Dog. Yet, it is also independent of both those books.

If you like cats, or know a child who likes cats, this book is worth tracking down.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews

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