Talk to the Paw Cos the Cat's Not Listening is a new children's rhyming story book by Loreta D'Souza and Neil Seddon.
The story appealed to me because of the feline theme and I thought that, given Lara and Holly became proud owners of a little black cat, Bella, late last year, I thought it would particularly appeal to them. Talk to the Paw Cos the Cat's Not Listening is about a black cat with attitude and our tiny Bella cat certainly has lots of that!
From the words of the story, It sounds like author Loretta's cat is also a bit of a handful like ours. The story is written using a rhyme and each double page has the repeated text "Talk to the Paw Cos the Cat's Not Listening" written across the bottom. Both of my girls appreciated the repeating pattern of the story but I'm not sure that the rhyme stands out enough and I found it quite tricky to read out loud to them.
Silly cat antics are something any cat owner will understand and I've seen many a poem and comedy sketch in the past which has built on this shared understanding of cat-owners everywhere but there were a couple of parts of this story book that I found to be a little abstract... almost as if they were a very personal observation of a cat that I didn't understand and I don't think my two girls really bonded with the cat in the story either.
Saying that, Lara (age 4) did recognise the naughtiness of the cat and she particularly enjoyed the illustrations by Ewa Poklewska because she was able to follow the iconic motif of the black cat who featured several times on each double-page.
Talk to the Paw Cos the Cat's Not Listening is available from Amazon in both paperback and Kindle editions.
