“She wasn’t always a bad kitty. She used to be a good kitty, until one day…”

Until one day, the family runs out of cat food.

This is clearly a crisis but the family does not respond with the appropriate amount of urgency. Their response, in fact, seems uniquely unimaginative.¹ They offer poor kitty a complete A-Z – literally – of Asparagus, Dill, fruits, Kidney beans, Mushrooms, Xigua², and Zucchini.

Kitty, quite rightly, “was not happy at all” and makes her displeasure clear by being a bad kitty, using methods from A-Z. She “Ate my homework […] Loitered […] was Mean to my mommy […and…] Zeroed the zinnias.” The look she gives you, breaking the fourth wall, when the author calls her “a very, very, bad, bad, bad kitty” runs true to life.

But then – oh, joy! – someone returns from the grocery store with “good food I bought for kitty” that runs, again, from A-Z, from “an Assortment of Anchovies” and “Chicken Cheesecake” through “Goose Goulash” and “Penguin Pizza” to “baked Zebra Ziti.”

Kitty accepts this peace offering, and goes on to become “not just any good kitty – a very, very, good, good, good, kitty!” using methods again from A-Z, apologizing to people she had earlier injured, giving to Unicef, Washing the car, and lulling the baby to sleep (“Zzzzzzz.”)

As a reward, the family brings kitty a dopey little puppy for kitty to share her life and her food with – which, based on the expression on kitty’s face, threatens another alphabet of trouble.

Which all goes to show, not just the importance of knowing your alphabet, but the impact of hunger on mood.

When my husband and I travel, he often pushes through without stopping for meals because he just wants to get there. When the grumpiness gets too annoying to bear, I put my foot down and insist we stop. “I know you can go all day,” I say, “but I am feeling famished – could we stop, oh, how about there, and pick up a little something?” While he grumbles in the car, glancing at his watch, I go in and buy two of something, returning quickly exclaiming how hungry I am. While we speed onward, I eat one of them and then say something like, “Oh, I was so hungry I bought two of these but I can’t really finish the other. I’d hate for it to go to waste. You wouldn’t want it would you?” The only thing he hates more than wasting time eating while travelling is wasting food. When he finishes eating, his hanger subsided, he apologizes and admits that he may have been a little hungry… you think?!? We’ve been together for decades and he still hasn’t figured out my secret technique for managing his mood. (Shhhhh.)

Being someone who cohabits with a bad, very bad, very, very, very, very bad kitty, I love this book – and I never read it aloud because I refuse to shop for Lizard Lasagne – and she gets in enough trouble as it is, without suggestions from Mr. Bruel, thank you very much.

1. Says the cat lady who once, in a similar situation, offered her cat a bowl of Cheerios with Pounce mixins, oh the look of betrayal she gave me… ↩︎
2. The picture looks like watermelon (?) but Bruel had already used W for Watercress. ↩︎