My Cat Blackie

This book is all about our cat and its role in our family. I wrote this book to tell other people about the story of our cat. I created this book to show how I value our pet.

Mrs. Blackie the Cat Meets Mr. Bunny the Rabbit is a fairy tale story that teaches the ABCs to small children. In the story, Mr. Bunny the Rabbit takes Mrs. Blackie the cat to the playground to meet his cool friends Mr. Mad Dog who plays a guitar and Miss Bluebird who sings out the alphabet song.

"Deeply moving...an honest and courageous book filled with love for a very special little cat - I cried. I hope everybody reads it who has ever lost a beloved cat. It is so rare to see a man let down his guard and talk about love with such depth and sentiment". Jeffrey Masson (author of THE NINE EMOTIONAL LIVES OF CATS and DOGS NEVER LIE ABOUT LOVE) Stephen Downes never much liked cats. But one day, his sons Patrick and Ben find three kittens at the bottom of the garden. The strays soon become part of the family. Stephen falls in love with Blackie, a confident, friendly cat who keeps him company while he eats his lunch and takes naps on his study floor.But one day Blackie's tail begins to droop and he seems listless and despondent. Stephen is alarmed and wonders what could be ailing his usually robust pet.From the family vet to an eye specialist and eventually to the vet hospital in Werribee, Stephen pursues every avenue to cure Blackie's illness and keep his beloved cat alive...Deeply moving yet unsentimental, BLACKIE is a beautifully written tale about love and loss. In describing the life and death of Blackie, Stephen expresses the intense experience of loving another living thing.

A lost cat tries to find his way home with the help of the new animal friends he makes along the way.

Discover the history behind the facts

A boy describes how he takes care of his cat Smudge.

A literary master’s story about the aggravations and great joys of cats, from “a most sophisticated novelist, with a gusting humor and a hushed tenderness of detail” (Julian Barnes) In the autumn of 1965, flush with the unexpected success of his first published books, the Czech author Bohumil Hrabal bought a cottage in Kersko. From then until his death in 1997, he divided his time between Prague and his country retreat, where he wrote and tended to a community of feral cats. Over the years, his relationship to cats grew deeper and more complex, becoming a measure of the pressures, both private and public, that impinged on his life as a writer. All My Cats, written in 1983 after a serious car accident, is a confessional memoir, the chronicle of an author who becomes overwhelmed. As he is driven to the brink of madness by the dilemmas created by his indulgent love for the animals, there are episodes of intense brutality as he controls the feline population. Yet in the end, All My Cats is a book about Hrabal’s relationship to nature, about the unlikely sources of redemption that come to him unbidden, like a gift from the cosmos—and about love.

Give an animal your heart and you get it back a thousand times. Animals enrich our lives. A conclusion, a thought-provoking impulse to look around in an animal shelter or maybe even take a little animal from the street; there are so many... perhaps on the way to a long friendship with deep gratitude. Our cat family has grown slowly but surely; all received animals originate exclusively from a shelter or from the street. We just have a big heart... None of these animals we want to miss. They are a wonderful part of our lives. Although they do not really "talk”, however, they constantly communicate with us; even if we do not always understand ... Unfortunately, one is repeatedly confronted with moments in which you doubt the humanity. As on the day on which this little black, fluffy tomcat stood outside our front door with a cut-off, bleeding ear ... The rest of the story "Blacky" better tells himself.

In this mystery set a nightmarish urban landscape, a seemingly routine case for an apprentice PI and her enigmatic cat becomes something far more twisted. Blackie does not trust Care’s new client, factory owner Mr Gravitz, who has hired the teenage private investigator to shadow one of his workers, a man he suspects is stealing from him. With his feline sixth sense, Blackie knows the client is not telling the truth—but how can he protect and warn his companion, Care, when he is only a cat? Combining elements of feline fantasy and traditional whodunit, As Dark As My Fur continues the adventures of this original and unusual detective duo as they fight for their lives and for the memories of those they love. Praise for The Ninth Life “Noir fans who are fond of felines will find a lot to like.”—Publishers Weekly