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You Can Take the Cat Out of Slough

Classification
Genre	Comedy
Age Range	Adult
Category	Non-Fiction
ISBN-10	0340898658
ISBN-13	978-0340898659

Rights
World	Hodder
Film	Chris Pascoe

Publishers
UK (C'wealth)	Hodder

You Can Take the Cat Out of Slough

by Chris Pascoe

I literally cried with laughter

Last summer, Chris Pascoe decided to do something monumentally stupid. He decided to spend some quality time at home with his two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Maya, and disaster-prone tabby, Birmingham, Brum for short. And also with Brum's rather vicious live-in-partner-girl-cat, Sammy, who he intended mainly not to wake. Let biting cats lie. Why he believed time with Brum would, with all the years of contrary evidence, be 'quality', he's not at all sure.

The result is a series of tales of death-defying feats. Paddling pools, gazebos, small birds and kitchens - all aspects of normal life can take a dangerous turn with the presence of Brum. Pascoe tries to train the tabby, restrain the tabby and even researches the stories of other danger cats in a bid to keep Brum alive a bit longer. And amazingly, despite the efforts of an exuberant two-year-old with a plastic mallet, he still is.'

'Anyone who loves or knows cats will be able to relate to Chris Pascoe's hilarious and affectionate account of the hapless Birmingham's adventures. I literally cried with laughter.' (Jo Rothery, Editor, Cat World Magazine)

'An original comic voice - wry, assured, sometimes whimsical and sometimes surreal but throughout refreshingly uncynical . . . the best kind of humour' (Julian Dutton, writer, The Alistair MacGowan Show)

Samples: 1

from YOU CAN TAKE THE CAT OUT OF SLOUGH

As I carefully grasped the knife’s handle, Brum took an angry swipe at me. I instinctively jerked my hand, narrowly missing his face with an accidental slash. Brum swiped at me again. The whole thing suddenly took on the appearance of a knife fight. I flipped the knife from one hand to the other, very much in the tradition of West Side Story. Brum edged warily sideways, ready to spring forward. I could almost hear the music and feel the tension. At this point I realised we had an audience. It was Maria, no....Maya, sorry. I carefully pointed the knife away from Brum. Maya looked at me quizzically. I smiled at her. “Why are you hitting Brummy with a knife?” she inquired. “I’m not. I wasn’t. We were just....” I spluttered, fervently hoping that she wouldn’t remember this scene in years to come. An image of her lying on a psychiatrist’s couch flashed through my mind, “My earliest memories of my father were of him knife-fighting cats in our kitchen.” Or worse, what if she mentioned the incident to Lorraine, who was already dubious about my looking after Maya. Tales of sharp bladed nursery horseplay with the pets wouldn’t help. Brum saw my distraction and seized his opportunity with four sharp sets of claws. He lunged forward, grabbed my arm extremely painfully and sunk his teeth in. I knifed him. Or at least, I almost did...

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