Customer Reviews

My Cat Spit McGee

5 star:		(42)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I say that because after reading this book I feel like I've come to know both Willie and Spit, as well as a few of his other great characters. As the author said, his loving, personal sketch of Spit is really much more, a drawing together of so many meaningful threads in his own eventful life. His travels with the large white cat are his way of sharing his family and social history with his best friend, and its a time for remebering too. Perhaps the most poignant moment in the story is Willie's image of his, and for a longer period, Spit's, waiting for the return of their beloved companion Harper, who never comes back. Now Spit is waiting again, peering out the door for Willie. Yet maybe its like Willie promised, if ever he gets to heaven, he's going to find Skip and all those relatives who went before him waiting to welcome him. Someday Spit with be united with him again, Willie believed that and I want to believe it too, for Willie and Spit and for all of us. On the last page of the book, Willie is holding the big cat on his lap and says to him, "Spitty, I love you." We chould all do that more often with the ones we care most about...this is a book about a cat and a special friendship, its a book of laughter and tears, its a book for everybody. I'm lucky to have known Willie Morris for just a moment, for far too short a time.

I received this book for Christmas from my veterinarian daughter. It was a fun read, and as a lover of cats, and owner of two, it was just the type of book that contains many smiles and just enough laughs to keep me waiting for the next one. Mr. Morris had a true connection with Spit, and the book was meaningful to me because I, too, was once owned by a cat like Spit. The best parts of the book were the anecdotes recalled by the author, little occurences that stood out in his memory about Spit. Each one is guaranteed to make you smile, and think about the special cat in YOUR life. For instance, the author recalls the time he and his (human) buddies were watching a baseball game on television. They were all anxiously waiting to see if this would be the game in which Mark McGwire would break the home run record. Well, it was, and the reaction of the gang, including Spit, is guaranteed to make you smile. But I had to laugh out loud as he described the time he had decided to take Spit on the road with him, and tried to convince the cat that walking on a leash is perfectly normal and acceptable. For a cat? Spit did not agree, to say the least, and the three pages that followed had me in stitches! I recommend this book to anyone who has a cat in their life now, or has at any time loved and been loved by a cat.

I just finished reading "My Cat Spit McGee" and read it in almost one sitting! I could not put it down. Willie Morris conveys the emotional roller coaster every pet owner feels - from elation to uncertainty as he explores the almost mystical bond between pets and their owners. This is the story of a cat-hater turned cat-lover being transformed by an unlikely hero -Spit McGee. Willie's transformation doesn't happen overnight however. Willie's journey from a cat-hater to a cat-lover happens as a series of events - (some funny and some sad) unfold in this tale of two unlikely souls colliding. Brilliantly and beautifully written.

This is one of those rare books that makes me joyful simply because of its existence in the world. God bless Willie Morris, his widow "Cat Woman", and of course, Spit McGee. I hesitate to admit I've lain awake nights worrying how Spit is taking the death of his delightful and loving companion, Willie. I can't recommend this book highly enough.

This book affected me more than any book I have read for a very long time. I laughed and cried several times while reading it. I could not put it down and finished it in two days. Some of the most profound and poignant pleasures in life are encapsulated in just 141 pages. Skip, Pete, and Spit are fascinating creatures, but it is Morris's keen observation and appreciation that renders them extraordinary. If you want to know how to find more meaning in your life, read this book and learn what can be gained from the simple and deeply abiding joy present in the change of seasons, in hometowns and baseball games, and the in companionship of a special animal. Wherever you went when you left this world Mr. Morris, I hope Skip and Pete were there to meet you at the gate.

Accomplished writer Willie Morris was a lifelong dog-lover and cat-hater, an ailurophobe. Growing up in Mississippi, that was only way a Manly Man could be. In "My Cat Spit McGee", the author describes his conversion to an ailurophile, or cat-lover, an epiphany apparently of the same magnitude as that experienced by Saul of Tarsus (a.k.a. St. Paul) on the road to Damascus.

Through association with his second wife, JoAnne, and after a series of response-modifying events, the author finds a boon companion in Spit McGee, a shorthaired, all-white male cat with one blue and one gold eye. It's in this short book's - 141 pages, hardcover - second half that Willie describes both the understanding that develops between himself and his new feline pal, as well as the personalities of Spit and several other family cats that won him over.

If you're not an ailurophile, or not someone confronted by fickle circumstance with a forced conversion, there's no reason to even crack this book open. For myself, a cat-lover of long standing, this gentle and heartwarming story made me appreciate more than ever my calico buddy, Trouble. Willie died in 1999, leaving Spit behind. Since I'm 51 and Trouble is approaching 9, there is a good chance that my furry friend will predecease me. I will rue the coming of that day. I shall miss her terribly.

When we lost Willie Morris, we lost a man of singular emotional insight, compassion and universal wisdom, all of which is on display in this book. It is a journey through the last years of a life that took him to the heights of publishing as the youngest editor ever of Harper's magazine, to national acclaim for his courageous first book "North Toward Home", and often into conflict with those he held most dear.

"Spit" is a happy final journey that is shared with him by his delightful wife, the Cat Woman, and their valiant cat Spit. We see an old social warrior, a man of uncommon influence in the Great Republic of which he so often spoke, finally finding the ineffable pleasures of hearth and home.

It is a simple story told by a complex American hero in his own imitable style. It touched my heart and will always be one of the most treasured books on my shelves.

This is the kind of book you gobble in two (or maybe three) bites! And it is delicious. Spit McGee is not just the delightful tale (tail?) of how a died-in-the-wool dog man comes to love cats, but also some very keen observation of the lives of cats. If you have cats, or know cats, you will laugh, cry and recognize those quirks! A wonderful gift!

Best known for the affecting memoir of his Southern boyhood, "North Toward Home," the late writer Willie Morris was a dog lover. He affirmed this for all time with the publication of "My Dog Skip," in which he lovingly relates his relationship with a childhood pet.

Describing "the mysterious chemistry that links a human being and a dog," the author writes, it "was God-given, and solidified by shared experience and fidelity and a fragility of the heart."

Now, let's be clear - Morris was not only a dog lover but he loathed and detested all cats. In later life, when Pete, his black Labrador Retriever died, Morris was asked if he would get another dog. "No," the author replied, "I'll get another wife first."

As it turned out Morris did marry a second time - to a woman who loved cats. Which is probably why on their first Christmas together his stepson gifted him with an abandoned, rather scruffy white kitten. Lumps of coal in his stocking would have pleased him more.

Nonetheless, Morris is eventually beguiled by this unlikely creature with one blue eye and one gold eye and, in fact, becomes Spit McGee's keeper, lackey, confidante, and pal.

More than an examination of the joys of man/feline friendship, My Cat Spit McGee takes humorous detours into the meanings of and reasons for Spit's behavior - his epicurean fancies ("strained turkey for infants"), his discernment of "some surreptitious passageway for his ingress and egress" that Morris was never able to divine, and his penchant for snoozing on his back with all paws pointed skyward.

Morris also explores the differences between cats and dogs, and the felines' jungle origins. Of all the winning pet books, My Cat Spit McGee penned in this author's matchless prose is one to treasure, just as Morris learned to treasure his cat Spit.

Cat-lovers and cat-haters alert. This is a wonderful book - literate, literary, funny, touching, and accurate. This tiny volume addresses the literary, psychoanalytic, historical, political,and archaeological, to name a few, domains that a man passes through as he embraces two new loves - a woman and ("Are you believing this?") a cat. The story of the leash is just right, from both leaders' points of view. The crux for me was when Mr. Morris and Bailey (his young friend who asked him to write about Spit McGee) asked each other what each had learned from their cats. Furthermore, what about a cocker spaniel that looks like Eudora Welty? I'm sorry that Mr. Morris died and thank him for sending me to the dictionary several times while reading this delightful book.