Kick the Dog and Shoot the Cat

by Amy Friedman

As a young woman, Amy Friedman took a job in New York, in the movie business. In this extraordinary book she tells us what it was like: how Jean-Luc Godard started her car for her, how she was paid to hold Ivan Reitman's coat on the set of Ghostbusters, where she worked with Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd. She tells also how she later fell in love with a Canadian sheep-farmer and left New York to live with him on his sheep farm near Gananoque. Before long she was baling hay and helping with the lambing. Now she works eighteen hours a day and sleeps with one ear open the other six. In Kick the Dog and Shoot the Cat, she tells us how she does it and why. It makes a funny, warm, and very moving story.

131 pages, Paperback

First published September 13, 2011

About the author

My most recent books are Desperado's Wife: A Memoir (as soon on Katie Couric on July 9, 2013) and the soon-to-be-released story of Anne Willan's life, the memoir One Souffle at a Time, with Anne Willan (St. Martin's Press, September 2013).

I've been writing for as long as I can remember, inspired first by trying to give voice to those who are voiceless. This has been the unconscious impetus behind all three of my memoirs and much of the fiction and short stories and thousands of essays I've written.

I worked for years as a newspaper columnist in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, and I still write (since 1992) the internationally syndicated newspaper feature Tell Me A Story that has spawned two books and three audiobooks.

I now live in Los Angeles and teach memoir and personal essay classes at UCLA Extension, The Skirball Cultural Arts Center, Idyllwild School of the Arts Summer Program, and PEN USA's Pen in the Classroom program.

Reviews

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wrote this book, so I can't brag, but I still love it. Available now only on Kindle, alas...and a few over-priced out of print versions.