Read The Five Lives of Our Cat Zook Online
Authors: Joanne Rocklin
The Five Lives of Our Cat Zook
AUTHOR'S NOTE
“Miraculo and the Twenty-Six Toes” is an original story by the author, as far as she knows. As is “Mud.”
The “ghost story” section of “Jewel the Ghost Cat” is derived from similar folktales from around the world, using the motif, or theme, of “A Corpse Claims Its Property.” (Source: Aarne-Thompson-Uther type 366, translated and edited by D. L Ashliman, 2000â2008;
http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0366.html
).
“Beau the Flying Cat” is also a variant of folktales from many countries, using the motif “The Talkative Tortoise.” (Source: Aarne-Thompson-Uther type 225A, edited by D. L. Ashliman, 1999â2010;
http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0225a.html
).
PUBLISHER'S NOTE
: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places,
and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used
fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business
establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for and may be obtained
from the Library of Congress.
ISBN: 978-1-4197-0192-4
Text copyright © 2012 Joanne Rocklin
Book design by Maria T. Middleton
Published in 2012 by Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher. Amulet Books and Amulet Paperbacks are registered trademarks of Harry N. Abrams, Inc.
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2. The Cats-Have-Nine-Lives Theory
5. Life Number One: Miraculo and the Twenty-Six Toes
7. My Wishing Theory and My Hope-of-the-World Theory
9. Life Number Two: Jewel the Ghost Cat
10. My Cat-Owner-vs.-Dog-Owner Theory
11. My Seven-Second-Meltdown Theory
15. Life Number Three: Beau the Flying Cat
18. Galileo and the Theory of Noticing
19. My Common-Letter-of-the-Alphabet Theory
22. My Theory of Happy-Ending Times
26. The Theory of Story-Making from Oona and the Great Rebus-Maker and Whopper-Teller
ur cat's named Zucchini, and we call him Zook, but that's not the most important thing about him. And neither is the INCREDIBLE fact that he's got seven toes on each front foot and six on each one in the back, for a total of twenty-six. (Most cats have five and four, for a total of eighteen.) His eyes are blue, like old faded jeans, and his coat is dark brown. But when he's lying on a sidewalk scratching his back, you can see some white markings shaped like the state of California on his belly. And some black tufts in the spot where Oakland is, which is where we live. One corner of one ear is clipped off. He's got shaky teeth, black gums, and breath that smells like the restroom in the Chevron stationâa smell we love, because it's Zook's.
If you run your palm along his right side, you can feel something like a little pebble stuck under his skin. It's not a pebble. It's a pellet from a BB gun. And that's not the most important thing about him, either. In fact, I try not to think about that so much.
Two and a half years ago, my brother, Fred, and I found Zook in the alley that connects the back of our apartment building with the back of O'Leary's Pizzeria. We go to O'Leary's a lot because of their famous fried zucchini. (Fried is the only kind of vegetable Freddy will eat.)
It was a warm, sunny Saturday, just like this one. Mom was in the stuffy basement laundry room, and Fred and I were sitting out in the alley eating lunch from O'Leary's. We had folding chairs out there, and back then the big blue pots were filled with lavender and red geraniums. You could smell the eucalyptus tree and lavender over the traffic smells. Birds were chirping, which I suppose they're always doing, but this was the kind of day when nice things like that got your attention.
Then something else got our attention.
“EE-OW! EE-OWEY!”
That's another thing about Zook: He's got the greatest pair
of cat lungs ever. There he was, stretched out in the warm dirt of one of those geranium pots, howling away as if he and the birds in the alley were singers in a band. Nowadays, Zook is famous in the neighborhood for his singing, but at the time we'd never heard anything like him before. And then he let Freddy and me pet him, rubbing his head against our legs. Probably hadn't been stroked in a long, long time. I noticed he was wearing a collar with a silver rectangle dangling from it. INCREDIBLY, in the middle of that rectangle was a little sparkly diamond! We lured that starving cat into the building with some fried zucchini. (Get it? Zucchini ⦠Zook.) Mom said we could keep him, so we cleaned him up, bought him some cat food, and brought him upstairs to live with us. Dad said our family could always use a diamond, or the gobs of cash you could get for it.