"Dave, this is not the direction to the library," says Misty the cat. (Photo by Laurel Cummins.)
Hi! Misty the cat here. My bloomin' hogger...um...human blogger invited me to guest-post again. Seems like a good time to do so after this month's publication of Misty the Cat...Unleashed, a book co-authored by me, Dave, and Jane Austen, minus Jane Austen. The same formula used to write the Jack Reacher novel No Plan B by Lee Child, Andrew Child, and Jane Austen, minus Jane Austen.
A brief interlude: The highly accomplished author/poet/blogger Colleen Chesebro posted a wonderful interview with Dave about Misty the Cat...Unleashed on her blog this past Thursday. Click on this link to see it. The blogosphere can be a great place, even though I didn't see the blogosphere at the 1964 New York World's Fair. I saw the Unisphere.
Anyway, in Misty the Cat...Unleashed I say a lot after I slip my harness in Montclair, New Jersey, and become lost (yes, I get a daily leashed walk that would've been sponsored by Coca-Cola -- "Taste the Feeling!" -- if "carbonation" weren't too long a word for me to spell). One of the many things I discuss in the book is a list of my 10 favorite novels, which surprisingly is also a list of Dave's 10 favorite novels but not a list of Jane Austen's 10 favorite novels because all the books mentioned were written after her 1817 death. She had eight fewer lives than me.
To write the rest of this blog post, I'm referring to the 10-favorite-novels list in Chapter 52 of Misty the Cat...Unleashed, though my thoughts here will often be different from those in the book. After all, blog posts and books are different mediums, as Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan Doyle learned at the seances he spent way too much time attending.
Here's the fave list, with a warning that the descriptions will contain lots of fiction about these 10 works of fiction.
10. History by Elsa Morante. They say Rome (where this World War II novel is set) "wasn't built in a day." That usually means it takes many more than 24 hours to create great things, but maybe Rome was actually built in, say, one minute. If Dave gifted me a Rolex watch, I'd know for sure.
9. Possession by A.S. Byatt. This novel should've been about a cat possessing a Rolex watch, but, as noted above, Dave didn't gift me one. So, Byatt's book became about two 20th-century academics investigating two 19th-century poets. Omitted from the story line was a 21st-century cat investigating whether the original cover of Murasaki Shikibu's 11th-century novel The Tale of Genji was edible.
8. The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery. I'm a cat who lives in an apartment complex, so every year I stand on my building's front porch to give a "State of the Apartment Complex Address." If I lived in a blue castle, it would be a "State of the Blue Castle Address." But the L.M. in L.M. Montgomery doesn't stand for Lotsa Meows.
7. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. The oldest novel on this list, yet it still post-dates Jane Austen's life. She was born in 1775, meaning she saw the Broadway show 1776 at the age of 1. Edmond Dantes paid for Austen's booster seat at that matinee performance after becoming the wealthy Count of Monte Cristo.
6. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. Bilbo and Frodo were not members of the Marx Brothers like Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and sometimes Zeppo, but they could've been. Same for Aragorno, Gandalfo, and Gollumo. Which reminds me that cat treats are preciousssss.
5. The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling. Should've been titled the Mrs. Norris series, after Argus Filch's pet cat. And those half-blood paw prints scared the hell out of me. Um...you say the sixth Potter book was called Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince? Not as thirst-quenchingly satisfying as Harry Potter and the Goblet of Milk.
4. Daniel Deronda by George Eliot. She authored better-known novels (Middlemarch, The Mill on the Floss, etc.), but DD is a gripping saga featuring two of these three themes: religion, unrequited love, and periodic claw trimmings.
3. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Set in St. Petersburg (St. Pet for short), protagonist Raskolnikov develops two killer apps. Or maybe he kills two people. But whichever of those two things happened, Dostoevsky "kills it" in this riveting novel.
2. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. Re the initials JC: Jim Casy is a Jesus Christ figure in Steinbeck's masterpiece, while I'm a Jersey Cat figure in my new book.
1. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. In which the title character becomes governess to a kitty. And there's someone in the Thornfield Hall attic, but it's not Atticus Finch.
Your favorite novels? If one of them is the just-referenced To Kill a Mockingbird, I, Misty the cat, didn't murder the winged creature named in the book's title.
PS: Dave tells me that, starting next week, he'll mostly return to writing "normal" literature posts that don't reference Misty the Cat...Unleashed to this degree. As long as Dave doesn't switch his focus to Misty the Cat...Unleased, because I want to stay in our apartment.
Dave's comedic new 2024 book -- the part-factual/part-fictional Misty the Cat...Unleashed -- is described and can be purchased on Amazon in a paperback or a Kindle edition. It's feline-narrated!
In addition to this weekly blog, Dave writes the 2003-started/award-winning "Montclairvoyant" topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece -- about my town's mayor announcing a run for New Jersey governor despite his VERY unpopular and problematic 2020-2024 term -- is here.
