Title: Kit Kat & Lucy
Author: Lonnie Hull Dupont
Publish date: September, 2016
Goodreads synopsis:
“After years of loving the vibrant city life in San Francisco, Lonnie Hull DuPont reluctantly trades her three-room apartment on foggy, lively Telegraph Hill for a farmhouse on a quiet plain in Michigan. She immediately misses the rhythm and the pace of the city, and the isolation country living brings has her longing for something more.
Enter Kit Kat and Lucy–stray cats who arrive at the farmhouse a year apart and each ask to move in. The antics and oddities of these two strong personalities wrapped in fur bring a new light to the farmhouse and DuPont’s life. Kit Kat, an obsessive-compulsive tortoiseshell, can purr her new human into a happier state of mind. Lucy, the playful, leaping Russian Blue who can nail a bat right out of the air, makes her laugh.
From the hysterical process of getting two strange cats to like each other, to the exciting years of watching those cats thrive–and inspire DuPont in the process–this book is an energetic tale of cat and human foibles. Animals enrich our lives, and the heartwarming story of how Kit Kat and Lucy changed one woman’s world will leave readers enchanted.”
The Good: This woman obviously loves her cats, they are her children and I understand that. These cats were so easy to fall in love with that it didn’t take long for me to be hooked by the story. It is nice sometimes to read a happy and very sweet book. That is exactly what this was, no extra fluff (no pun intended) just a plain old book about a woman, well couple really, and their cats. I enjoyed just sitting down to read this book because it was just happy. I felt good while reading it and I did get to spend time with some pretty awesome cats for a while.
The Bad: Uff, there were definitely things about this book that drove me absolutely crazy. There were times that I had to put the book down because all I could think was “Are you kidding me?! People actually think this way?” I grew up a farm kid in rural Wisconsin. I had two indoor cats and a bunch of outside cats. I am a HUGE animal lover. I feel their pain and when something happens to them it is a serious death to me. That said, there were times when this woman seemed to be over worried about normal day to day things. Example, there was an entire chapter dedicated to justifying keeping her cats indoors. Indoor cats are nothing new and to me completely normal. It was very difficult for me to keep reading about how she was just so concerned that they would get hit by a car. I don’t know of anyone, I’m sure there are some out there somewhere however, that would criticize her for having indoor cats. Anyone who wants to read a book about a woman’s cats are going to understand her need to keep them indoors.
The world I grew up in and currently live in is so much different than her world. It made it very difficult for me to connect and relate to her. On page 131 she writes “The road to the clinic was a back road, and while driving it, we came upon a railroad crossing. There were not lights or gate at this track-just a sign that read “Yield.” Take a minute to think about that.” Growing up along the Mississippi River and living in central rural Wisconsin railroad tracks are everywhere. Most places there is nothing more than a yield sign, if there is anything at all. I know most people probably would find that strange but to me this part of the book was just odd.
Another example of odd behavior is when they would not get their cats declawed because they didn’t want to “maim” them. That is their choice and if that’s what they want to do that’s fine. However, their cat would go crazy at the vet when he tried to trim her nails. They got upset with the vet when he refused to trim them anymore because he was afraid he was going to get hurt. When discussing the vet’s decision about trimming her nails they said “You know, if he won’t trim her nails, what else won’t he do?” Ok fine, everyone is entitled to their opinion, however when I turned the page I actually laughed out loud when I read “But Joe and I came away realizing we absolutely could not and would not trim Kit Kat’s nails at home. Not if we valued our own skin.” So it’s terrible of that vet to refuse to trim her nails but there is no way that they would trim them on their own. I almost stopped reading the book completely here, but I didn’t.
Recommendation: I would recommend this book to anyone who has a great love of cats. This is definitely not a book for everyone. There were times that I didn’t think I could get through it and I do love cats. As mentioned above, there were some serious oddities about this book for me. Maybe these are things that are normal for most people but for me, they were not. Don’t get me wrong, this was absolutely not a terrible book. Most of the time I really enjoyed the story, just at the times when it was weird, it was REALLY weird.
*I received this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest review*
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