Conversations With My Cat by Chuck McKenzie & MacReady McKenzie with Ripley McKenzie

Suzie Eisfelder

Some time last year I was gifted with an eARC of this book. It was not good timing for me, I had covid and should have been in bed. As I haven’t yet figured out how to transfer ebooks to my phone…reliably, I sat up and read it at my computer. Yes, I should have been in bed, but sometimes you need to do the things you’ve promised. The brain wasn’t working well and I could just see problems arising because I’d tried to do tech stuff with brain fog. Bear in mind I had both covid brain fog and menopause brain fog. I could really see it not going well.

Anyway, I read the book, at my computer. Sometimes I had to take breaks. Not just because I was tired, but because I was laughing so much it made me cough. I blame myself for that. I knew it was going to be a funny book. I’d seen some snippets because I’m a friend of Chuck McKenzie on Facebook. I was one of the people encouraging him to make those snippets into a book and sell them. I knew when I’d finished the first page, but I still continued to read it during my first bout of covid last year. My body regretted that.

If you’ve already had covid you know one of the symptoms is coughing. When my asthma is not good I tend to cough when talking, or laughing, or just about anything. The combination of reading this book with covid was not pleasant. I spent most of the book laughing, that led to coughing. I laughed a lot, therefore I coughed a lot.

If you’re a cat lover who thinks cats are lovely furry creatures who can do no wrong then this is not the book for you. It’s also not for kids or the faint hearted as the cats have a fair command of the English language and know some swear words.

Why do I think these conversations were real? Are you kidding? Haven’t you seen those videos of cats talking? Or videos of cats who use buttons to talk to their human slaves? I’m prepared to bet McKenzie has somehow managed to eclipse all of these cats in these videos and taught his cats to speak properly (that might explain the expletives). Although, I do wonder if maybe it’s the other way round, and they decided to put his eight fingers and two thumbs to good use by making McKenzie write everything down. I mean, the more money he makes the more food and treats he can buy…right???

But seriously…I stopped for a while there. I’m not sure there is a seriously, not with this book. If you’re not offended by strong language, words that hold up by themselves without any visible attempt at support, and you like reading books that are mostly dialogue then this is for you. That’s a CMOT Dibbler promise. You can find his book on the Daft Notions website, bear in mind that some of writing has a more serious bent, but just as well written.


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