My Cat Spit McGee
Willie Morris

Pet Projects -- Of course I wanted to love (and I mean Love, complete with all of its accompanying blinders to faults big and small) this memoir as much as I adored Morris' previous remembrance, "My Dog Skip." And I wanted to love this new tale because Willie Morris has passed from this Earth and because Willie Morris possessed such generosity as a writer and because I love (and I mean Love, as in, "Yes, let's call this our home") these rascal beasts of the feline variety, especially my own cat, Keeper. Well, "My Cat Spit McGee" features many sweet moments and several poetic passages, but I've come to realize an important lesson in reading this book: Dogs are stories; cats are sculpture. Graceful or menacing, sly or slumbering -- a cat's beauty exists in the viewing, not in the telling. And Willie Morris was and remains a great teller of tales.