If you know our blog at all, you know we love our cats and that Layla was a rescue kitten, and we are passionate about cats having good, loving homes and being cared for. Cats are amazing, intelligent and funny creatures and deserve the best life they can be given. Jasper and Layla are members of our family, and even if they do wake us up way too early to be fed, and bring home dead mice as love offerings, we adore them and they are part of our lives.
So it’s not a surprise that I was delighted to be asked to review Finding Their Way Home by Nicky Copeland.
In many ways it’s a similar story to our own, with one cat having to get used to another cat, and the adjustment that comes with that, but this is the story of how they brought Cleo home, as a rescue cat, then introduced Baloo, and is written from the cat’s perspective in poetry form. Told by Cleo, it tells the tail (see what I did there?) of her coming home, and then her new cat parents bringing Baloo home to keep her company whilst they were out at work, and how both Cleo and Baloo had to learn to get used to each other, and eventually learned to love each other.
It isn’t often that a story makes me cry, but this book is just so lovely, and written so simply and beautifully, and really does make you see it from the cat’s eye view and tugs at the heartstrings, especially if you have had the privilege of being a rescue cat-human, you know that you have given a cat or cats a much better life than the one they came from and how loved they feel.
The illustrations are beautifully done and at the end of the book, Nicky has included some really helpful tips for how to help your cats adjust to new cat siblings, which is very handy.
This truly is a lovely book, for cat lovers, and to read to your children. It has become one of our treasured cat books (we have a few, not surprisingly) and we really hope that Nicky will write some more stories about Cleo and Baloo and what they get up to, because they sound like they might be fun to get to know…
Click to find out more about Cleo and Baloo and their Facebook page!