The Cat Who Covered the World: The Adventures of Henrietta and Her Foreign Correspondent

by Christopher S. Wren

Book Overview

Henrietta was an ordinary New York City cat until she ventured overseas with foreign correspondent Christopher S. Wren and his wife and children. Over seventeen years and tens of thousands of miles,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0684871009
• ISBN13: 9780684871004
• Release Date: November 2000
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.9" x 8.8"

Customer Reviews

Adventures of Harriet

An absolutely delightful book. I enjoyed it so much, I passed it on to cat lover friends and have just received an e-mail telling me how much they enjoyed it.

If only people were as smart as cats

This is a wonderful book.Obviously, I have cats . . . . . or cats have me, as the case may be. My opinion is based on living with cats, which enables me to judge Wren's assessments on the basis of shared experience. Wren truly knows cats, and obviously Henrietta was able to sum up his qualities quite neatly and with a beautiful sense of humour. It reflects the inner and deeper qualities of Times reporters.Ostensibly, this book is about travels with a cat. If that sounds strange, think of John Steinbeck's Travels With Charlie after years of his writing semi-intelligible crap about the great issues of mankind in general and America in particular. Some of Steinbeck's sorriest writing came when he was trying to be most relevant, such as his World War II novel The Moon Is Down. His best writing came when he wrote as a reporter, from The Grapes of Wrath to Travels With Charlie.Wren is a great reporter, and this book reflects the habits and attitudes of people in the various countries where he was a correspondent. It's one thing to talk of Soviet bureaucracy, and South African Afrikaaner blind arrogance, or Canada's silly nationalism; but, when Wren describes such attitudes when dealing with his cat, the peccadilloes of various cultures becomes glaring in their absurdity.As a Canadian, I can attest to his experiences in taking Henrietta to Ottawa as a classic portrayal of Canadian silliness (which I have encountered at the border). When the The New York Times posted Wren to Canada, the following dialogue occurred:INSPECTOR: What are you doing in Canada ?ME: I'm covering it for The New York Times.INSPECTOR: Why can't your job be filled by a Canadian ?Touche. Wren is skilled at presenting such inanities throughout the world, often prompted by his experiences of traveling and living with his cat in various countries. The usual journalistic practice is to write dead-serious "thumb-suckers," those long introspective articles that probe, analyze and explain the inner meanings of esoteric issues. But, such articles have much greater impact when they can be explained in terms of an analogy, which is the accomplishment Wren manages superbly in this book.As Wren sums up, Henrietta was "an ordinary cat who thrived on extraordinary adventures." We all live like that. It's just that Wren is able to express it so succinctly. Sometimes we just need to look at ourselves through the eyes of a cat in order to understand.Writing such as this book is what makes The New York Times the finest newspaper in this nation.Sadly, it also illustrates a great weakness of the Times. Every day, The Wall Street Journal offers in its middle column on page 1 stories such as those in this book - - - and they invariable explain the world in far better terms than most of the "thumb-suckers" that plague so-called "serious" journalism.Hopefully, someday an editor as the Times will read Wren's book and ask, "Why can't we get our reporters to write stories like this ?" and then, it will slowly

Delightful

I never liked cats very much until my boyfriend got one. And then I was introduced to their odd idiosyncracies and bizaare habits. My boyfriend lent me this book and I really couldn't put it down. It's hard to believe that one cat could live such a fulfilling life with such adventures (and live to tell about them).Christopher Wren is a gifted writer. A journalist by trade, he's able to give wonderful details about the exotic locations his family and their cat lived in. And it's obvious he and Henrietta shared a special bond because he was able to glean from her enough insight to bring her personality to life. Paris, Rome, Egypt and New York, friendly neighbors to distinguished ambassadors, it's all in there. If only humans can live half the life this cat did!

Worldwide Cat

There are plenty of fine books of appreciation for a particular dog, but, given the nature of cats, there is understandably less literature in their praise. The best book I have read celebrating a particular cat is _The Cat Who Covered the World: The Adventures of Henrietta and Her Foreign Correspondent_ (Simon & Schuster) by Christopher S. Wren. Wren was a foreign correspondent for _The New York Times_, but when he wrote his first article about traveling the world with the family cat, he got more response than he did for any news articles. He acquired Henrietta as a gray ball of fluff because the person giving kittens away was giving a bottle of Scotch away with each one. Henrietta went with the Wren family to Egypt, China, Moscow, Canada, South Africa, and elsewhere. The book tells of the difficulties of finding her the right food, or kitty litter, or of getting her through customs; but it also shows how in a family which traveled everywhere together, Henrietta became a movable symbol of hearth and home.A fine book for anyone who likes cats, _The Cat Who Covered the World_ is also a memorable portrait of a loving family in unusual environments, and of amusing and frustrating clashes of culture. Wren is a good story teller, and has a wealth of tales about his cat, whom he obviously loved, and her extraordinary life. Charming.

If its good enough for NPR...

I heard about this book on NPR and HAD to go right out and buy it! Its a wonderfully uplifting story for any cat-lover. I give it 5 MEOWS, m'self.