Got this from Dad over 20 years ago. I have read this ages ago, will re-read it before Peter leaves the building, which we all have to do soon. I liked the book if my memory serves me right. At least I kept the book.

Have to comment while reading. Cat people are strange. We dog people have a faithful companion and we love each other. Some dogs idolise their owner. Cats, on the other hand, all seem to have Asperger's syndrome - their social skills leave something to be desired and they concentrate on one thing at a time. They are creatures of habit. Many of them do not want to taste new foods. And their owners idolise them...
This guy is very English, his housekeeper comes to open the curtains in the morning. Reminds me of a Finnish couple who had a mansion in Finland and a chateau in France. The Finnish housekeeper came to clean once a week even when they were away. Once the lady of they house was sending the housekeeper on a weekend course to learn about herbs, but the husband said she could not go, as he was leaving for France again and needed the housekeeper for packing. They compromised and the housekeeper came back home from the course on Saturday evening to pack and left early the following morning. The funny thing was that the husband had stood beside her the whole time, telling which goes where. Why not pack himself?

Talking to a cat on a phone every day when in Oxford - what did I say about cat-lovers earlier on? I wonder what the housekeeper was thinking when made to hold the phone every day??
A client of ours is a cat-breeder and she once sent her cat to be mated. The owner of the tom phoned and said she thinks the cat is not in season. " Of couse she is. Give the phone to her". She then cajoled to her cat: "Now be kind to that handsome tom and you can soon come home.” And a couple of more sentences of the same callgirl kind. The tom’s owner on the other end was surprised and asked what she had said as the cat had began to smile and bat her eyelashes to the tom and the wedding seemed to be on. What was more embarrassing was that the female cat’s owner had taken the call when entertaining her husband’s clients over dinner. They didn’t know them well at all and the guests were sitting on the table big-eyed (and -eared) and asked the husband ”Who is she talking to?” The husband tried to look as normal as possible when saying ”To our cat.”
About cats interfiering with writing - a Finnish writer Kirsi Kunnas used to have Siamese cats and one of them learned to use the old-fashioned typewriter. Kirsi first accused her sons of messing up their mom’s typing with gibberish, but they plead not guilty. Then at one time she caught the cat red-pawed; she was sitting in front the typewriter, pushing down a letter and trying to catch the metal thing which hits the letter on the paper. Case solved.

I'm getting a picture of this writer in my head: He is a grumpy old bachelor who hates people in general and women in particular. He has studied some obscure topic of which nobody qualifies to a sensible profession, so he has ended up teaching in Oxford. Which he dislikes. He is probably one of those grey lecturers who mumble something from their pulpet and only people in the first row can make out full sentences. Students entertain themselves in various ways during his lectures. Perhaps I now ought to Google him.
Edit: Close enough: He wanted to study poetry but was persuaded to study history. He wanted to run for a seat in the parliament in the labour colours, but didn't get in. He later became a conservative (Churchill has put it well: Those who are not radicals when young have no heart and those who are conservatives when old have no brains). He wrote over hundred books, his main topic being Elisabethan time. He was a gay. His opinion about slackers, people who avoid work: "I don't want to have my money scalped off me to maintain other people's children. I don't like other people; I particularly don't like their children; I deeply disapprove of their proliferation making the globe uninhabitable. The fucking idiots - I don't want to pay for their fucking." I think the picture I had of him in my head was rather accurate, although he was not this straight forward in his book about Peter.

I think I have read enough, won't bother to read everything as Mr Rowse had obviously gone a little soft in the head as far as Peter was concerned. I still have two more books to check out before dot-dot can get her parcel, so I should hurry.

Yet another cat book to the winner of the Plumbing Renovation RABCK. Are all cat people this odd?

I guess I´m one of strange cat people :) Thank you!

I guess I´m one of strange cat people :) Thank you!