Reviewed by Jeanne
Josephine Fish, a most superior calico cat who lives with an
assortment of male cats (mostly stupid ones, in her opinion), a dog, and two
humans, one male and one female.
Josephine whiles away her time staring out windows at the birds. One day, she concentrates hard on a bird
and—surprise!—she can understand what the bird is thinking. Her human female likes the chickadees, so
Josephine begins to query them as to what they think about the humans. She soon branches out to other animals, such
as squirrels and chipmunks.
This activity brings another visitor, Mr. blue jay (sic) to
visit Josephine. Since she has been able
to communicate with the chickadees, Josephine is now a feline of interest to
some mysterious animal leaders who want her to use her prowess with the computer
to send emails to politicians to further legislation to benefit animals. The
leaders have information about certain people—the President, members of
Congress—and will use it to get what they want. Will it work? Or will Josephine get her humans in deep,
deep trouble?
I found this book while doing some shelf-reading and was quite taken with the cover. The copyright being 2005, I wondered if it
were so thoroughly outdated as to be discard material so I decided to read it
to find out. The verdict is “sort of.”
The President in question is one President “Hinton” and the mysterious leaders
know that he is having rendezvous with a woman who is not Mrs. Hinton, which is
the leverage they have with him. There
are references to a “Bob Bowl” who is also running for president, but is “too
old,” according to one of the humans. There
are a couple of Senators who have some shady business deals who also are sent
emails. This part of the book almost seemed quaint.
However, I did enjoy Josephine’s description of the various
animals’ thoughts as well as her interactions with the other cats and with
Gloria the dog. There are some
interesting observations as well as good information, delightfully presented.
The book would have benefitted from a proofreader in
spots. There seems to be a changing number
of male cats in the household for one thing; for another, the elegant and
sophisticated Josephine starts referring to herself as “flea-bitten” and
“mangy” for no apparent reason. Some of the typewritten quirks I can ignore—the
book is supposed to have been written by Josephine herself—but others just seem
“off.”
Overall, this is a fun book, a tad dated, but not as much as I
expected. Josephine is one clever girl
and very observant. The tongue in cheek
humor can still evoke a smile even if readers may not recall some of the
political landscape of the era.
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