⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “A must-read for Homer fans. Heartwarming and beautifully written.”

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “This book will delight you. Hard to put down once started!”

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “Written in a warm and humorous way as only Ms. Cooper can tell it.”

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “Such an enjoyable read!”

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “Love Gwen Cooper and all her cats!”

Sample Chapter

Spray Anything

It’s difficult to rouse Clayton—a cheerful, affectionate mush of a cat—into anything approaching anger, and if you were trying to pick a fight with him on purpose you’d probably find yourself stumped. You could yank away a beloved toy he was in the midst of playing with, pull a half-chewed cat treat right out of his mouth, shove him unceremoniously off your own or someone else’s lap, stroke his fur the wrong way for a solid half-hour (as our young nephew did on one occasion), stick him full of needles like they do at the vet’s office, where Clayton is beloved—and all you’d get for your trouble is purrs and head-bonks and a series of “MEEEEEEEE”s entreating your friendship as he happily hippity-hopped after you on his three good legs. “Clayton’s a stuffed animal,” I’m fond of saying, and with his ultra-soft, velvet-plush black belly, he does bear a strong resemblance to the Gund teddy bears I was so fond of as a child. Nothing, in other words, could be less threatening than Clayton is.

Even the proximity of unknown cats—a universally reliable instigator of feline hostility—tends not to rile Clayton. The sight of neighborhood or feral cats making pit stops in our tiny back yard is a fairly frequent one and Clayton, from his post before the French doors leading from our kitchen out to the yard, generally takes this sight in with unruffled equanimity. He isn’t fazed in the slightest even when—upon catching a glimpse of Clayton sitting on his one haunch and observing them with friendly interest—these strange cats’ backs arch and their tails puff up, unsure what to make of a little black oddball who apparently never got the memo that cats are supposed to be wary of other cats they don’t know. A few years back, a feral mama cat gave birth in the space between the wooden fences separating our yard from our next-door neighbor’s. Far from being irritated at seeing a portion of his territory commandeered in this way, Clayton appeared ready—if not delighted—to welcome this feline family with open paws. The sight of two fuzzy kittens gamboling among our trees and shrubs proved an especially frustrating allure. Whenever one of the kittens wandered close to the house, Clayton would stretch all the way up against the French doors on his one hind leg—front paws pressed eagerly against the glass panes—or else promptly roll onto his back to expose his tummy. He’d look at me pleadingly with big yellow eyes that eloquently begged, Please, pleeeeeeeeease let me play with those kittens!

Eventually, when the kittens were old enough to be weaned but still young enough to be socialized, we trapped the whole family with the assistance of our local trap-neuter-return group, Neighborhood Cats, so the mama could be spayed and the kittens adopted out into permanent homes. It was the happiest possible ending—and certainly the most responsible one—but, still, it was a sad day for all of us when we saw the last of the kittens. Clayton especially.

Just about the only sure way of getting Clayton’s dander up is when a transient backyard feline puts our yard to use for…let’s say, “darker” deeds. For a good month or so, the cat who lives three doors down took to dropping into our yard a few times each week to poop in the patch of grass beneath our stone bench. He always seemed to stop by when Clayton happened to be making his daily back-door rounds, and Clayton’s all-pupil eyes would pop so far out of his head with rage—the neighbor cat’s own eyes half closed in an expression of deep and peaceful contemplation as he did his business—that I worried Clayton might actually be on the verge of an aneurism.

Fanny is generally a much cooler customer than Clayton. She doesn’t deign to notice such things as who in the neighborhood is pooping where, nor does it ever seem to bother her if an errant feline visitor pauses long enough in his travels to give a territorial urine spray to our fence and rosebushes. (Although it should be noted that Fanny herself routinely sprays up the side of her litter box, rather than crouching to relieve herself in a more ladylike fashion, which perhaps makes her more sympathetic to spraying by others.)

Clayton, on the other hand, is invariably incensed at such doings. His ears stretch and flatten out to the sides until the top of his head is perfectly horizontal, and—squeaking his indignation as loudly as he’s able (having never really mastered a mature cat’s full-throated meow)—he’ll take a few steps forward and backward, and then forward and backward again, his whole little body quivering in outrage as he turns up a look at me that says, Do you see this?! DO YOU SEE WHAT THAT CAT IS DOING TO OUR ROSES???!!!

It was Clayton’s consternation that first drew my attention to the new guy—a big bruiser of a tuxedo cat—who showed up in our yard one August day, about a month ago, to spray our bushes and startle the birds from our trees. Generally, those of us inside the house take far more notice of the outside cats than they do of us. To the extent that any of them regard Clayton at all, it’s either with the aforementioned wary hostility, or else with the sort of disdainful indifference that a rough-and-tumble outdoor cat might reserve for a pudgy, squeaky-voiced mama’s boy who spends an absurd percentage of his day being hand-fed treats while curled up on a soft pillow in his human mom’s lap.

And, at first, this encounter seemed to follow the regular pattern. It was a sunny weekday midafternoon, and Clayton mightily mew-squeaked his ire over the invading tuxie while I rinsed out my cats’ food bowls preparatory to serving them lunch—and the cat outside, having given our rosebushes a thorough hosing, lazily strolled about the yard. It wasn’t until Fanny joined us in the kitchen, as she always does upon hearing the scraping and rinsing of bowls that means lunch is imminent, when the pattern long established by so many visits from other cats was disrupted.

I knew from experience how nearly impossible it was to hear anything happening inside through the French doors when they were securely closed. From the tuxedo cat’s perspective, Clayton must have appeared more than a little ridiculous—a hopping mad three-legged cat, doing a little back-and-forth stomping “dance” while his pink mouth opened and closed in unheard protest. Fanny had joined Clayton before the French doors, sitting on her haunches and delicately curling her long, sinuous black tail around the dainty little feet that always made such a contrast next to Clayton’s wide and thicker pads. Unlike Clayton, who was completely caught up in policing the tuxedo cat’s crimes and misdemeanors against our backyard flora, Fanny’s head was down, her attention absorbed by a little feathered-mouse toy that she batted around idly with one front paw.

The tuxedo cat’s yellow eyes had raked over Clayton once or twice in apparent boredom as he raised his nose into the air, eyelids partially lowered against the sun, to take a few exploratory sniffs of the air in this unfamiliar terrain. But when the cat caught sight of Fanny, his eyes flew open and his entire body froze. And then something happened that had never happened even once in all the through-the-windows encounters we’d had with outdoor cats over the years.

His eyes firmly fixed on Fanny, the tuxedo cat began walking forward—with a slow, deliberate step—straight over to where my cats were sitting on the other side of the French doors.