Fup. Store Cat.
The Trip to Kahani
Chapter 44
Some
time ago (days or months or years, it's all a blur now), Fup set out from
the city with her good friend Bear and his housemate Zooey. Wiggums joined
them in Boring, and just a few miles farther into the hills they met Joe,
a horse with an itch to get out of the pasture and roam.
The strange thing about turning back toward home is knowing the way.
With each landmark she recognizes, Fup can't help calculating how long
it should be before she's there. But what's most surprising about heading
back is having gone at all.
"My parents met in the woods, in Maine, during an ice storm that knocked
out power across six counties for a week," Fup recites, more to herself
than her friends as they gather at the edge of a stream to drink.
"We know the story," Wiggums reminds her, pawing at his soaking chin.
Joe and Zooey could probably drink forever. The cats by now are accustomed
to waiting. "I am so incredibly hungry," Zooey moans before sinking his
mouth back into the lazy current.
"I want to see my sisters," Fup says. She's so happy she's practically
despondent. She could die of satisfaction; she might swoon from pure despair.
Fup's Picks
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That Cat That Changed My Life: 50 Cats Talk About How They Became Who They Are by Bruce Eric Kaplan

"All these cats lead exciting and varied lives wholly independent of the human
race," notes the editor in his Introduction. Well, duh. Scant attention has
been paid to the role of community in modern cat culture, so what a relief that
here, finally, fifty articulate felines set the record straight. Funny, sad,
occasionally shocking, but never less than true, these brave monologues
reaffirm our interdependency in ways that choreographed public displays such as
Paws Across America never can.
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Unleashed:
Poems by Writers' Dogs
by Amy Hempel

In "Dog Kibble," Tasha Baxter's verse exhibits a brutal economy of
words: "Life is never meaningless," her villanelle announces, "there is
always food." Here and throughout this collection these authors demand
your attention, as if to bark, "You can send me to my room for yelling
at the neighbors but you cannot silence what woofs in my heart!" Among
the selections nominated for Best
American Writing by Pets 2000 are Bob Barker Barry's sordid and hilarious
hallucinogenic escapades with Lynda; a tragic, posthumous prose poem by
Marrow Irving; and Sadie Louise Lamott's "Spoon River Sadie Louise," a
wildly metered exploration of the cross-cultural dynamics within a
household occupied by dogs, cats, birds, and small children. The sheer
intellect of these collected pieces will renew your faith in dogs.
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Is Your Cat Too Fat?
by Bronwen Meredith

Too fat for what? And what business is it of this Meredith person's
anyway? Bronwen sounds like the kind of lady I wouldn't like at all.
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