(++++) FULL-ON FELINITY

Cat’s Very Good Day. By Kristen Tracy. Pictures by David Small. Putnam. $18.99.

     When you think about it, what does constitute a very good day for a cat? Kristen Tracy delves into the feline mind with sensitivity, acceptance and humor in Cat’s Very Good Day, in search of what it might be like to be the feline member of a reasonably typical household on a reasonably typical day. The results, abetted by David Small’s wonderfully evocative illustrations, are delightful – whether or not all humans-who-share-space-with-a-cat will see things from this “very good” perspective.

     The words here, as befits a picture book for young readers and pre-readers, are simple, but Tracy uses them well in creating neatly descriptive rhymes and half-rhymes to show what sort of critter the unnamed cat is at various times during the day. It starts with “Sunrise lounger / Piano-key pounder,” Small’s first illustration showing the grand full-body stretch with which all cat fanciers are familiar, his second showing the cat marching atop piano keys with a thoroughly anthropomorphic smirk on his face as a little girl watches from the staircase in the background. And onward to “Dollhouse fiddler / Toilet-bowl dribbler,” with a gentle lifting of a seated doll on one page and a lick-your-lips mess-up-the-bathroom-floor scene on the next. Paired occurrences like these are interrupted from time to time for an evaluation of how things are going: “What a lovely day,” “What a happy day,” and so forth.

     What makes Cat’s Very Good Day so much fun is that the words and pictures mesh but are not exactly in sync: for example, the “happy day” page shows the cat being unceremoniously carried out the door by the scruff of his neck by a very annoyed-looking human, which makes sense in light of the previous scene being “Sofa destroyer.” And not everything goes exactly according to the cat’s plans outdoors: it is clearly fun to be a “Baby-squirrel chaser,” but there is nothing to do but slink away looking shamefaced on the next page, upon becoming a “Mama-squirrel facer.”

     Yet the cat takes all the day’s events very much in stride, and anyone with whom a cat deigns to share living space will recognize some of the amusingly exaggerated expressions created by Small to illustrate scenes such as “Fishbowl tapper” (with a very nervous-looking fish swimming about) and “Hairball gagger” (with all three house humans seated at a table and looking on disapprovingly, trying unsuccessfully to enjoy a peaceful meal). The words describing the day keep changing: “wild” and “busy” eventually lead to “stressful” by way of “Dark-storm worrier” (showing a full claws-out leap toward safety in response to a lightning flash and, presumably, the following thunder) and “Back-closet scurrier” to become a “Curled-up loner” trying unsuccessfully to wait out the storm without fear.

     So, how to make it through the night despite the scarily unpredictable weather? The cat’s solution is perfectly sensible – and, like so much in this book, will be very recognizable to anyone who knows cats or is known by them. Silently gliding up the stairs to the little girl’s room, the cat becomes a “Warm-pillow seeker” peering up from the side of the bed toward the sleeping girl, and later a “Moonlight cuddler” when the girl awakens and smiles down at him, and at last an “All-night snuggler” as cat and girl settle in for warmth, rest and, readers can rest assured, sweet dreams. And it is inevitable that this will lead to the proclamation, on the book’s very last page – on which the parents look in toward the sleeping child cuddled with the cat – that this has indeed been “a very good day.” And clearly not only for the cat but also, despite some ups and downs, for the humans as well.