So, What's It Like to Be a Cat? Book

So, what's it like to be a cat?

I'm very glad you asked me that.

Are cats afraid of the dark? Where do they prefer to sleep? What time do cats eat their breakfast? And what do they really think of dogs (and people!)? The award-winning team of Karla Kuskin and Betsy Lewin explore the secret inner lives of felines in this beguiling question-and-answer interview between an intrepid child and a very clever cat.

Publishers Weekly

Lewin's (Cat Count) title page illustration cleverly makes clear the premise of Kuskin's (Toots the Cat, reviewed above) playful poem by featuring an announcement on a schoolroom blackboard: "Today's Assignment: An Interview." A boy sits in a pupil's wooden chair with paper and pencil while a gray cat reclines in a director's chair, as if she were the prized guest of a late night show. "So, what's it like to be a cat?" asks the red-haired boy. "I'm very glad you asked me that," answers the yellow-eyed feline, and she launches into a description of her habits ("slipping out on silent feet,/ I search for something nice to eat") and the differences between cats and other creatures. The boy's questions punctuate his subject's self-centered riffs about where she sleeps and demonstrations of how well she can leap. Lewin's fetchingly feline black-lined watercolors on stark white pages model how the pet can "bounce and pounce/ and slide and sally,/ rush and run/ and twirl and spring" until she literally knocks her interviewer off his chair. The furry star is fittingly egotistical and arch, whimsical and proud. At times, the rhyming text seems a tad formal for a conversation, but throughout Lewin underscores the humor inherent in Kuskin's depiction of a cat's narcissistic existence, and the black-lined gray heroine exhibits all that a feline should be "Meow. And how." Ages 3-8. (June) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.