hermione-granger

Feline Post Includes Mentions of Jane Austen and ‘The Host’

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I, Misty the cat, say: “Putting together a guest blog post is like putting together a puzzle.” (Photo of my kitty self taken by my adult female human Laurel.)

Misty the cat here, returning for my every-two-month takeover of Dave’s blog — which I do by gunpoint, minus the gun. This is a particularly memorable time for me to post because tomorrow is the 8th anniversary of my adoption into my forever family, from whom I’ve received everything I could desire except a bed the size and shape of Buckingham Palace. King Chuck III has some ‘splaining to do.

And in nine days — December 16 — there’ll be a milestone moment for literature: the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s 1775 birth! Rebecca Budd, who comments here every week, has already posted about that anniversary in one of her great blogs. The year 1775 was also significant for being the start of the American Revolutionary War and for Apple’s rollout of the iMusket 9.

Back to Austen. I’m often (well, never) asked how I rank her six novels, and here’s my kitty answer: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Oh, you want titles, too? 1) Persuasion. 2) Pride and Prejudice. 3) Sense and Sensibility. 4) Mansfield Park. 5) Emma. 6) Northanger Abbey. This is also Dave’s order of faves (rhyme alert!), which means we were both bribed by the same literary scholars. Austen’s early 19th-century books have aged well…partly because I keep them in my wine cellar. Actually, I don’t have a wine cellar. No cat does.

And today, December 7, is the 84th anniversary of the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, an event vividly depicted near the end of Herman Wouk’s compelling novel The Winds of War. If those winds had become strong enough, Wouk’s book would’ve been titled The Hurricanes of War — storms that fall alphabetically between Hurricane Violin and Hurricane Xylophone.

The Winds of War was followed by Wouk’s epic War and Remembrance — the title of which has the initials “WAR.” Coincidence? Well, Hurricane Coincidence falls alphabetically between Hurricane Bassoon and Hurricane Didgeridoo.

My current reading? I, Misty the cat, recently finished Twilight author Stephenie Meyer’s The Host, an excellent work of sci-fi that stars a being who lives inside a human body. So, no, the book is not a historical novel about Johnny Carson, who was not related to The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter author Carson McCullers, who was a top-notch writer but apparently didn’t know that a heart can’t hunt animals without a permit and that vegans prefer Fannie Flagg’s novel Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe. Also, American frontiersman Kit Carson was not a feline like me.

Natty Bumppo did the frontiersman thing, too, in James Fenimore Cooper’s five “Leatherstocking” novels that included The Last of the Mohicans. Cooper was an American contemporary of aforementioned Englishwoman Jane Austen, and there are even rumors that they collaborated on a novel called The Last of the Emmas. So I’m puzzled (see photo) that we later had people such as actresses Emma Thompson and Emma Watson.

The latter of course played Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter movies based on the J.K. Rowling novels. Seven books, eight movies, and nine lives (experienced by cats like me). Plus there are 10 characters in Agatha Christie’s famed mystery novel And Then There Were None, whose plot focuses on the number of dry-food pellets left in my bowl after I finish eating. No mystery where those pellets went.

Which books do I want for Christmas? Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Fannie Flagg’s A Redbird Christmas, John Grisham’s Skipping Christmas, Betty Smith’s A Christmas Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Anthony Burgess’ A Christmas Orange, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Christmas and Punishment, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New Christmas, Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Christmashead, E.M. Forster’s A Passage to Christmas, Chinua Achebe’s Christmas Falls Apart…

Dave will reply to comments as I either finish the puzzle I’m photographed with or swat every piece of that puzzle into January 2026.

I, Misty the cat, say: “There’s gotta be a sidewalk sale around here somewhere.”

Dave and my comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for the book features a talking cat: 🙂

Dave is also the author of a 2017 literary-trivia book…

…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more, including many encounters with celebrities.

In addition to this weekly blog, Dave writes the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — from which Sir Walter Scott should remove himself from discussion of a referendum-halting court decision — is here.

Summer in the City? No, Summer with a Kitty

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My feline self sprawled next to Elizabeth von Arnim’s The Enchanted April, which I will not discuss today because I haven’t finished reading it yet. The first letters of that novel’s title spell “tea,” which I don’t drink. Thank you for your attention to these two matters. (Photo by Dave.)

Misty the suburban cat here with my every-two-month blog post. My previous guest piece was in June, this one is in August, and the next one will be in October. Except that U2’s October album was released in 1981, so I’m not sure how my next blog post will be in…October. There IS a song on that album called “Stranger in a Strange Land,” which is about me at the vet for my yearly check-up.

Anyway, my adult humans Dave and Laurel saw the Superman movie this month, and enjoyed its thrills, acting, and empathy. But I, Misty, was not allowed in the theater because of being a cat. I was actually kind of relieved, because sitting through 25 minutes of ads and previews would have had me yowling loud enough to be heard on Mars — which billionaire bozo Elon Musk, aka the Tesla dude, wants to not only colonize but have The Martian Chronicles author Ray Bradbury write a 2025 sequel called The SpaceX Chronicles. Given that Bradbury died in 2012, he…missed the pleasure of seeing the catastrophic flop of Musk’s stupid Cybertruck.

The Superman film reminds me and other kitties of Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, the 2000 novel partly based on the real-life Jerry Siegel/Joe Shuster duo who created the Superman character for comic books in 1938 — the year the iPhone minus-69 was released.

More generally, the 2025 movie starring the “Man of Steel” also reminds my meowing self of fictional characters possessing abilities beyond the capacity of most mortals. One is the Lee Child-created Jack Reacher — who’s not a superhero but displays unusual strength, incredible fighting abilities, great intellect, and other attributes in the 29-book series that began in 1997. Exactly a century after Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), which stars a vampire who acts out in all kinds of ways after Frankenstein defeats him in pickleball. A tip of the hat to Mary Shelley.

Another character who combines exceptional brains with exceptional physical abilities is the prehistoric protagonist Ayla of Jean M. Auel’s The Clan of the Cave Bear and its sequels. Ayla’s many accomplishments included inventing things and being the only person able to ride Baby the lion (a feline like me!), although she never played pickleball with her horse Whinney.

Some fictional people even rise in the air or fly — in magic-realism novels and other books. Among them are Remedios in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, Margarita in Mikhael Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, and the title character of J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan — which was first a play, then a novel, then an animated movie, then a live TV film, and finally a jar of peanut butter which also flew when Dave tossed it out the window to compare its hang time with a jar of Skippy peanut butter. Denying me the opportunity to swat both brands off the counter with my cat paws.

There are also characters who might not be extraordinarily adept in a brute physical way but are really, really smart. Hermione Granger of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books, Sherlock Holmes of Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective fiction, Hercule Poirot of Agatha Christie’s mysteries, Lisbeth Salander of Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and its sequels, etc. Lisbeth sadly did not have a cat tattoo, but I forgive her because she’s Swedish and thus might toss some Swedish meatballs my way.

Dave will reply to comments so that I have time to eat the aforementioned meatballs. Rest assured that I maintain a balanced diet — one meatball in each side of my mouth.

I, Misty the cat, say: “After years of study, I’m finally qualified to inspect Belgian blocks.”

My and Dave’s comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Misty says Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for the book features a talking cat: 🙂

Dave is also the author of a 2017 literary-trivia book…

…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more.

In addition to this weekly blog, Dave writes the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — about my school district’s huge, recently discovered deficit — is here.