Fup. Store Cat.
The Trip to Kahani
Chapter 1
East of the City of Books, where the land lumbers up from the river and settles
gradually into folds of forested hillside, there thrives a patch of trees where
still-spindly saplings huddle in the heavy shadows of their forebears. Infused
with story from the moment they poke through the ground, someday the saplings
might be famous in their own right. Tall tales slant down through cracks of canopy,
feeding such dreams: this mossy stump bore the tale of the wise spider... a sibling
of that tall fir shepherded into writing the one about the yellow bear... the
equine epic fostered by these gnarled roots has been translated into twenty-six
languages...
All the great animal stories start there, in those woods. Is it the soil? Is
it the water? If stories simply thrived according to climate, how could one
modest slope dominate publishing for decades while neighboring hills send one
generation after the next to careers in home furnishings and construction?
"Clara and Ro want me to go," Fup tells Bear. The urgency of her
sisters'
argument had surprised her, coming as it did when Fup had pretty much
convinced herself otherwise — the hillside is too far, the woods
are too wild, the bookstore surely wouldn't allow her to disappear for
who knows how long the trip might take. All signs had been pointing her
to stay put in the City.
From a fourth floor windowsill warmed by morning sun, the arching
gray-green
bridge rises in the distance, reaching for the river's east bank.
"We'll leave this weekend," Bear volunteers.
"We will?"
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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