And the winner of our first Stephen Memorial Award for Books with Cats of Distinctive Character is…
“Tigger: Memoirs of a Cosmopolitan Cat“
by Suzanne Haywood
We had more entries than expected, quickly narrowed them down to a top eighteen and then the arguments began. Between Ophelia, the clockwork cat, Gatsby and Yoshi, detectives extraordinaire, Khana the airship rat-catcher and many more it was fascinating to see how many takes there were on the idea of a distinctive cat.
After some difficulty we finally selected the top eleven: ten runners up and one winner.
Tigger was chosen as our final winner because it is a very feline memoir of a cat who lived on three continents, and whether dealing with dogs, chasing squirrels, or upsetting quarentine officers, lived his life to the absolute full. We decided he was the sort of cat that Stephen….would have hated meeting because it would be another cat on his property, but it would be mutually directed back at him from another feline with equal personality.
This isn’t to neglect our runners up, all of whom were unique and left a distinct impression on us as readers. In order of cat name, these are:
- “Homunculus and the Cat” – Ankh-Si, a winged cat with nine lives
- “Bouhaki” – Bouhaki, a lifesaving stray
- “The Clockwork Menagerie” – Ophelia, the clockwork cat
- “Dead Again” – Elvira, a cat with an eye for mysteries
- “The Petectives II: Stalking Horse” – Gatsby, the more active detective of the two feline sleuths
- “The Counterfeiter Catching Cat” – Hamish, a Maine Coon with scary intelligence
- “The Wake of a Dragon” – Khana, the pirate’s airship cat
- “Love, Lies and Hocus Pocus 3: Allies” – Sir Arthur Kipling, who talks to his owner
- “Bleed Through” – Roly Poly (RP) a cat who can see his owner’s visions.
- “The Petectives” – Yoshi, definitely the Mycroft Holmes of felines: smart and sleepy.
We know the Petectives series has two entries. Both cats have very distinct and different characters, and this also prevents the writer having to split an award between two cats and dealing with feline jealousy.
Each entry, placed or not, will be getting their reviews on Bookangel and elsewhere over the course of October and November, as we didn’t want to spoil the results by releasing them earlier.
For more about the competition, and more comments on the cats, you can also see it on its own site at:
