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Title: Herding Cats

Author: Christopher J.F. Gibson

Narrator: Ruth Golding

Format: Unabridged

Length: 43 mins

Language: English

Release date: 09-30-15

Publisher: Christopher J. F. GIBSON

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories & Anthologies

Publisher's Summary:

This book is a collection of five "catty" short stories. Sometimes the cats are anthropomorphic; other times they are, well, just cats....

These well-reviewed and delightful stories are read by the talented voice actor Ruth Golding.

Members Reviews:

A Catty Collection

This book consists of several very short stories about cats and some photographs and drawings of cats.

The stories are "It's Raining Cats and Dogs," "Herding Cats," "Chicken?..for the Soul," "Sibling Rivalry," and "The Missing Cat." My favorite of the group was "Sibling Rivalry" with "Chicken?..for the Soul" the runner-up. All except "Missing Cat" spotlight the sometimes odd (to humans) behavior of the cats in their lives.

I'll admit that I liked the pictures and drawings of the cats even more than the stories. Who can resist a cute kitten or a pouncing kitty?

All of the stories are suitable for children, although a few of the British turns-of-phrase might need to be explained to some children.

Recommended for animal lovers who are often mystified by the behavior of their cats.

A few simple anecdotes

This collection of stories, with a British accent, is basically a set of anecdotes, mostly without plot. The writer has decent craft, but stumbles often. For example, at 48%, the author writes of a cat that "he examined her front paws." The sex of the cat changes four times in that story, and there are missing commas and quotes here and there. One story was about a cat who was devastated that she was missing a whisker, concerned that she couldn't judge openings well because of it, and then embarassed that the other cat would notice and make fun of her. She solves the problem in a very unrealistic way, involving some dexterity that would require an opposable thumb. The last story involved an old woman who had lost her cat, and ended in a very unsatisfying manner which I won't describe so as not to give away the ending. I didn't enjoy the book, but I gave it three stars because someone else might. It's very modestly priced; you can't lose much by giving it a try.

Incisive but plain anecdotes. Formatting could have been better.

Herding cats gives you 5 short stories all unsurprisingly about cats.

These are 'Herding Cats', 'The Missing Cat', 'Sibling Rivalry', 'Chicken? .. for the soul' and 'It's raining cats and dogs'.

Each story is accompanied by pictures of the cats which have been put through various photoshop style effects (e.g. pencil, blue frame bleed out, sparkle, sepia etc). While the photos are lovely, I'm not sure the artistic twist adds anything to them. In particular they don't translate well on the older kindles. I imagine they would be much more at home on the newer Kindle Fire.

The stories are very much on the flash fiction end of the scale being from two to eight pages worth of print equivalent, and each is written in a first person style that is reflective and casual.

One aspect that could have been improved here is formatting. The stories are presented as a wall of text with no ident to break up the paragraphs which is easily recitifable and would improve the readibility of the work.

The stories however are well edited.