The Best Cat Ever

cassettes ok, case a little bent around the edges

3hrs; read by the author, abridged

The eponymous feline is, of course, Polar Bear, the stray Amory adopted in The Cat Who Came for Christmas (1987) and celebrated in The Cat and the Curmudgeon (1990). But as the new book opens, the venerable puss has "been with" Amory for 14 years: no one quite knows how old he was when he was snatched from the snow on Christmas Eve. So after Amory strolls down a pre-Polar Bear memory lane--with his usual entertaining tales and ever-so-catty comments about places (Milton Academy and Harvard), people (Kate Hepburn, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, and other celebrities), and publications (the Saturday Evening Post and TV Guide)--he gets down to brass tacks: the medical problems that beset man and beast in their later years. Amory and Polar Bear both suffer from arthritis; Amory is hit by a truck; and Polar Bear develops serious kidney problems. As pompous as Amory's prose can be, his love and respect for the critter with whom he lived for a decade and a half are palpable. Expect requests for this final entry in the Polar Bear saga.

k.A.