The Cat Who Went to Paris

Zusatztext “Peter Gethers’ trio of books about the globe-trotting Norton are witty and warm. One not only learns of Norton’s sweet personality but also about the author’s not-so-cynical genuine feelings about what really matters when it comes to love and cats.”—Vicki Myron-!author of Dewey: the Small Town Library Cat who Touched the Worllk Informationen zum Autor Peter Gethers Klappentext "Norton is clearly a charmer, and Gethers tells his story with contagious affection....Will warm the heart of any confirmed cat-lover." THE WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD Before Peter Gethers met Norton, the publisher, screenwriter, and author was a confirmed cat-hater. Then everything changed. Peter opened his heart to the Scottish Fold kitten and their adventures to Paris, Fire Island, and in the subways of Manhattan took on the color of legend and mutual love. THE CAT WHO WENT TO PARIS proves that sometimes all it takes is paws and personality to change a life.Foreword   A few weeks ago, I made out my first-ever will. At thirty-six, it left me feeling slightly melancholy, more than slightly middle-aged, and somewhat sentimental. Looking to share my sentiment, I mentioned to my mother that I had—quite magnanimously, I thought—left my New York City apartment to my brother Eric’s one-year-old son, Morgan. Instead of the expected motherly glow of affection and pride, she looked at me as if I were an insane person.   “Can you do that?!” she asked.   I didn’t understand her wide-eyed confusion, especially since, on the scale of human accomplishment, my mother ranks her small grandchild somewhere between Mahatma Gandhi, Thomas Jefferson, and Bo Jackson.   “Why not?” I said, just a tad confused. “I mean, I hope he doesn’t get to use it for another forty or fifty years, but if he does, it’ll go to Eric first and he can—”   “Did you say Morgan?” she interrupted.   “Yeah. Who else?”   “I thought you said Norton,” dear old Mom told me.   “My cat? You thought I left my apartment to my cat?”   “Well,” she said, in a particularly wise moment, and shrugged, “with Norton, you never know.”       1   Before the cat who went to Paris   This is a book about an extraordinary cat. However, the extraordinary thing about any cat is the effect it has on its owner. Owning a cat, especially from kittenhood, is a lot like having a child. You feed him, do your best to educate him, talk to him as if he understands you—and, in exchange, you want him to love you. He can drive you mad with his independence. He can, just as surely as a child, create a tremendous desire to protect him from anything bad. He is small, vulnerable, wonderful to hold—when he lets you. And he throws up on just about the same regular schedule.   Like children, cats exist on a separate and probably higher plane than we do, and like children, they must be at least partially defined by their relationship with their parents. And though they can do all sorts of amazing things such as hiding in the tiniest room imaginable and refusing to be found no matter how late you are for wherever it is you have to take them, they cannot write their autobiographies. That is left to humans. So this, as it must be, is also a book about people. And thus about relationships. And all sorts of other things cats have no business being involved with but can’t seem to help themselves.   My involvement with a cat was strictly accidental. In fact, I had to be dragged into it kicking and screaming.   By way of example, a little over seven years ago, someone asked me to name ten things that I believed were truly self-revealing, deeply heartfelt, and absolutely irrevocable. This person, a woman I was going out with, asked me to do this, I believe, because she thought I was a person without much emotion, without a lot of passion. She had, I also believe, bee...

Product details

• Authors: Peter Gethers
• Publisher: Ballantine
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 06.10.1992
• EAN: 9780449907634
• ISBN: 978-0-449-90763-4
• No. of pages: 208
• Dimensions: 130 mm x 205 mm x 6 mm
• Series: Norton the Cat; Norton the Cat
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature; Travel > Travel guides > Europe