For years Tom Cox might have seemed like a regular sort of bloke – a lover of late nights, rock music and beer – but he had a dark, furry secret. Tom was a cat lover. For a while, he kept his passion in check, but then he met Dee, his moggy-loving soulmate. He left London and his job as a rock critic behind ans he and Dee, her cat Janet and three new kittens moved to a remote part of Norfolk, thinking their cat madness had reached its limit. They were wrong.
In Under the Paw, Tom records the chaos of owning seven of the most charismatic, idiotic and duplicitous cats in the country. On call around the clock for multiple sets of whiskers, Tom encounters death, depression, flying fur, and the first human sentence spoken by a feline. And then there is the heartbreaking story of The Bear, his oldest cat: a ‘painfully sensitive’ survivor moggy who may or may not be an evil genius.
This is the second cat book by Tom Cox that I’ve read (the first been The Good, The Bad and The Furry which I reviewed here). Under the Paw is the first cat book written by Cox though reading them out of order doesn’t matter too much. This book introduces Cox’s cat obsession and some of the cats that aren’t featured in the other book but of course the starring character for me once again had to be The Bear aka the famous sad cat from Twitter. In this book you get to learn more about The Bear and follow him from a young age, I often like to have a laugh at The Bear’s photo’s on Twitter so he was the main reason for reading this book.
I found myself reading Under the Paw quite slowly, not because I didn’t enjoy but because it obviously isn’t a gripping, page turning novel. It’s essentially a book about cats and one man’s love of them. However it was entertaining and it did provide me with a few laughs along the way so it was pretty good for someone like me he easily has the potential to become a crazy cat lady!
Rating: ★★★★☆
Leave a Reply