Unadulterated Cat
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Product Description
The Unadulterated Cat is apt an endangered species as more and more of us settle for persons dull mass-produced cats the ad-men sell us – the pussies that purr into their gold-plated food bowls on the telly. But the Battle for Real Cats sets out to change all that by helping us to recognise a right, unadulterated cat when we see one. For example: real cats have ears that look like they’ve been trimmed with pinking shears; real cats never wear flea collars …or appear on Christmas cards …or chase anything with a bell in it; real cats do eat quiche. And giblets. And butter. And anything else left on the table, if they reflect they can get away with it. Real cats can hear a fridge door opening two rooms away …
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This book is extremely amusing, but not very accurate
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5
First, I reflect Terry Pratchett is a masterful writer. Second, cat fanciers are dull when enraptured by the tiny furry pests despite being masterful writers. This is no Discworld, I did not find it entertaining enough to bother to read the whole thing. Ansel Adams probably would bore you with photos of his kids. Speilburg would probably bore you with his home movies.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
This was my introduction to Terry Pratchett’s writing. Reading all of the reviews led me to judge that this book was a amusing take on the world of cats. This book, which reads like an essay of observations, is not ground breaking and is certainly not hilarious. If I were counting I would say that there might have been ten chuckles all together. Certainly not as amusing as it was cracked up to be.
The treatment felt superficial and the observations felt recycled from additional writings about cats. Nothing here would recommend this book over any additional cat book or tale that I have read.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
Let me say that I’m a huge Terry Pratchett fan. I have all his books, and like them. Which is why I ordered The Unadulterated Cat sight-unseen.
I was only a few pages into it when I thought to myself, this doesn’t feel like Terry Pratchett’s writing. It’s curiously flat. His additional books give me the feeling that practically every sentence is well thought out, either advancing the plot, or showing some appealing aspect of a name’s character, or giving us some (perhaps twisted, but valid) insight into how the world works. And yes, of course the humor.
But this doesn’t feel that way to me at all. Yeah, there are a few truisms along the way. But precious few (any?) of them felt like they had any real depth. OK, we all know that cats stare at the refrigerator a lot. And he mentions that. Several times. And we know that cats will hide under beds, or in additional out-of-the-way places. And scratch you if you try to get them out. But is any of this breaking news?
Another thing that’s few and far between is the humor. Yes, there are Pratchett-lines occasionally. Very occasionally. For example, describing humans’ evolutionary ancestors, they’re described as “… small crouching shapes with hairy chests, no forehead and the intelligence of a gameshow audience.” Excellent line, but the few that are there are hardly enough to to save the rest of the book.
To be honest (and undoubtedly reasonably unfair to Mr. Pratchett), it feels (not that I’m adage this is what happened, but it *feels*) like it’s something he threw together one afternoon, lacking too much thought.
Another way of describing it is that I have problems shaking the feeling that a name else wrote this, then Terry Pratchett came in as a “speech doctor” and punched it up with a few suggestions and some cute one-liners. Again, I’m not adage this happened. But if a name had agreed me this book to read, and I didn’t know the leader, I’d find it hard to judge it when they told me it was Pratchett’s. (Although some of the pieces of humor would seem familiar.)
Pratchett has a partner on this, artist Gray Jolliffe who provides cartoons on nearly every page. What an absolute waste of time and paper. I’m sorry, but I have absolutely nothing excellent to say about them.
* They lack any sense of elegance in the drawings (they verge on amateurish)
* They convey no real emotion (the expressions on their faces are all cartoonish)
* I got no sense of insight into cats from them.
* The drawings just unadorned aren’t amusing. In. The. Least.
Compare them with, for example, Pratchett’s wonderful The Last Hero, with Paul Kidby’s brilliant depictions of (among many others) the Mona Lisa, Rincewind and Lord Vetinari. Now, sure, Kidby’s work is far more sophisticated than Jolliffe ever tries to be, but it’s certainly possible to breathe life into even simple line sketches. See for example, Gary Patterson’s “Curiosity” at http://www.nannavalon.de/Cats/Curiosity.jpg. But there’s no life in Jolliffe’s work here. For me, the drawings just got in the way.
So why did I give this book a two-star rating? It seems I can’t give only one star to anything that Terry Pratchett does.
I guess the bottom line is that unlike any of Pratchett’s additional books, if I were to lend it to a name and never got it back, I wouldn’t miss it in the least. Would I ever re-read it. Doubtful. Which is too terrible.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
“The Unadulterated Cat” is the world’s leading cause of the phenomenon known as “The Pratchett Moment”.
The Pratchett Moment is described thus: The victim reading a book and a line strikes them as so unutterably amusing that they just have to laugh. They try to hold it in but it quickly becomes apparent that such attempts are hopeless. It escapes, regularly out of the side of the mouth, but sometimes through clenched lips with a humourous ‘parp’ noise (known as ‘Blowing a Pratchettberry’) or, more embarrassingly, through the nose and, rarely, bringing milk with it whether milk has recently been ingested or not (PISLGS or Pratchett Induced Spontaneous Lactic Generation Syndrome). The laugh builds in power, ricocheting off of the ribs, shaking the belly, causing the shoulders to go, until a full-throated guffaw is liberated, along with a amount of tears. It is at this precise instant that the unfortunate victim realises they are on a crowded train carriage and everyone is slowly edging away from them. And they do not care.
The Unadulterated Cat is so amusing is should probably be banned by international treaty or, at least, stickered with a warning that says “read this book in public at your own risk.”
For fans of Pratchett’s work all that is needed is this: Take all of the Greebo moments, place them in a book, make them 80% more amusing, add humourous illustrations, light touchpaper and retire to a safe distance.
For persons who don’t know Pratchett’s work (where have you been? A desert island?) this is a hilarious look at the interaction between humans and their feline masters, the tiny, slinky, furry, murderous balls of purr that rule the world yet suffer our own arrogance with mostly excellent grace.
This is a celebration of the moggie, or Real cat. No bow-bedecked, spoiled objects of feline grace eating from fine crystal plates are these, as a replacement for they are scar-faced, torn-eared, swaggering balls of malevolence who remain, as ever, welcome in our laps, our beds, and our hearts.
Buzz must be some form of mind control.
A must for any Pratchett fan or any lover of cats.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5