Dancing With Cats [Hardcover]

When I was a young boy, my father took me to the circus. I can remember to this day my first glimpse of the lion tamer. His power, his finesse with that great beast, called to the deepest recesses of my childhood soul. At home, I asked endless questions about the lion tamer. My father answered each one patiently, but he never took me back to the circus. Childhood ended, I grew up, married and by the time I had my own children I had all but forgotten my early fascination.

Then, for my daughter Eliza's eighth birthday, my wife suggested we buy a cat. I thought it a fine idea, and it is only looking back now on that fateful day that I can see hidden beneath my indifference the shades of an obsession that would come to dominate my life.

We bought the cat, a Bengal, much to Eliza's delight. I didn't take much notice of the animal at first, until one day I looked over my paper and saw Eliza exciting it with a piece of string. The sight gave me a disturbing feeling, a sensation of immense and seductive power trapped somewhere in that string. I pushed the feeling away and soon forgot about it.

A year later, while perusing a small bookshop while on a family vacation in Marrakech, I discovered a dusty hardback of 'Dancing with Cats' hidden away behind some travel books. I decided to purchase it for Eliza.

The owner of the shop, a small and anxious man, tried fervently to dissuade me from buying the tome. My French is conversational at best and I only caught a fraction of what he was saying. His gesticulations grew increasingly frenetic as I placed my money firmly on the table and left the shop with the book.

I walked immediately to a cafe and opened it. I sat in that cafe for god knows how long, my eyes enraptured by the strange philosophies and eerie illustrations I found within its pages. As I read I felt myself descending, felt something else rising to take my place. Whether the book released something that had been waiting within me since those first glimpses of the lion tamer, or whether it was the dark power of the book itself that caused my transformation, I'll never know. I don't wish to know.

I cut my holiday short, citing an emergency at work. My family stayed on in Morocco and I returned home the next day. I dismissed our cat-minder and stood in the living room with the animal. She rubbed her back against my shin and meowed. I recall looking down at her, noting that she had her tail held aloft in what I am sure was anticipation.

I opened the book and spoke its words. Immediately the cat rose up on her hind legs and began to dance in slow, rhythmic movements. My lip trembled as I read aloud, releasing the book's arcane words into the quotidian stillness of my living room. The cat danced, faster, faster and as I spoke she hissed to the air and I cast the book aside to dance with her, screaming at the ceiling like a madman.

The Book, as I have come to know it, teaches the reader how to release immense power, a power the orientals have known for centuries but has been all but lost to the Occidental mind. After that first dance I lay sweating and broken on the floor, certain I would never open it again.

That evening I bought eighteen more cats. They gathered before me, and when I opened the book I felt my very soul leaving my mouth as it formed over those words. All I can remember of that night is the noise. The patter of dancing paws. The blood and the screams of unfamiliar voices.

When my family returned there were four hundred and nine cats in our house. My wife left me and took the children with her. She thought I was mad, but it was she who was mad; mad for not ending my life, mad for leaving me with those dancing beasts and leaving The Book in my hands.

I have nothing now. No family, no home and no job. The Book has taken it all. It is only now, as I write this final warning, this plea to those who would listen, that I understand why my father never took me back to the circus. The power of the cat charmer is too great for a frail human form to bear, and yet once it has found you, it never leaves. It is too late for me now. They meow for my return as I write - but for you dear reader, for you it is not too late. Learn from my hubris. Stay away from The Book.

Cat lover or cat hater, you will find this book surprising and hilarious!! And if seeing cats fling themselves into airborne acrobatics doesn't make you laugh, then look at the owners' expressions (and clothes) as they bust their moves in purrfect harmony with their kitties. Buy it: you will laugh out loud!!

I would just like to say that this book is a cracking read, and me and Tidddles have really gotten into it.

We have spent endless hours perfecting the 'Cat Flap' and 'Kitty Titter' routines.