BOOKS: The Master’s Cat & The Ugly Dachshund
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1998:
The Master’s Cat:
The Story of Charles Dickens
as told by his Cat
by Eleanor Poe Barlow
132 pages. $24.00 hardcover.
The Ugly Dachshund
by G.B. Stern
Illustrated by K.F. Barker
192 pages. $15.00, paperback.
Both from J.N. Townsend Publishing
(12 Greenleaf Drive, Exeter, NH 03833), 1998.
Charles Dickens spent the last 14 years of his life
with a small white cat as his constant companion. The cat
was reputedly deaf. At least in Eleanor Poe Barlow view of
Dickens’ later years, as allegedly written from the cat’s perspective,
this did not preclude her from hearing human
speech. Purported dialogue appears on almost every page,
including improbably long soliloquies.