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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
15 tales of familiars, shipscats, et al., February 25, 2001
Belden, Wilanne Schneider: "The Gate of the Kittens" - Yes, the title is a reference to Norton's novel _The Gate of the Cat_; this is a Witch World story, although not directly related to the novel.Bell, Clare "The Damcat": The writing style here reminds me of Lilian Jackson Braun's `oral history' stories, without an interviewer. The elderly narrator worked on the Black Canyon dam project in 1934, along with a Hopituh and his wildcat, and has his reasons for saying that it can't be demolished. Boyer, Elizabeth H. "Borrowing Trouble" - No relation to "Trouble" later in this volume; the human protagonist is a fire wizard's apprentice who gets a familiar to keep from being expelled as hopeless. The character's names are all Scandinavian, but there aren't many other Scandinavian overtones. Cahoon, Blake "Day of Discovery" - Toys with the `cats are aliens' theory (see Norton's _Star Ka'at_ for an example). The human characters are physicists who may answer the eternal question, how can a cat disappear in a small apartment? Carr, Jayge "Wart" - Spacers' shipscats run the gamut from the Biotech shipscats in Lackey's SKitty stories, where they've been genetically modified for greater intelligence, to this story. Wart and his rival Grimalkin not only don't mindspeak each other or the humans aboard ship; Wart doesn't think in particularly sophisticated terms, although this story is told from his point of view. Dunn, Marylois "Yellow Eyes": Cat and White Cat also appear in _Tales of the Witch World 1_ and Catfantastic 2's "Shado". White Cat, the female, acts as a familiar to the lady of the castle, while the macho Cat spends his time hunting, bossing the other cats and dogs around, and cadging food in the kitchens. `Yellow Eyes', a new hound bought at a fair, is much brighter, by cat standards, than the other hunting dogs. She's detected the presence of a strange animal in the countryside that's scaring the game away - a giant `leaf-ear.' Farley, Donna "It Must Be Some Place" - "Imagine tossing a pair of magic socks straight through a dimensional doorway!" Butterfly, a magical tortoiseshell tom, knows more about magic than Jack, the apprentice doing laundry, and his master put together, but he's no familiar. Fortunately, he has enough of a soft spot for Jack to help him find out where lost socks go, before his master gets home from a wizards' convention. (Farley is well aware that all tortoiseshell cats are female; that's how you know that the toms are magical. Read the story, OK?) Friedman, C.S. "The Dreaming Kind" - The genetic experiment's sole modification to the kittens was to enhance their vision. Why, then, did their minds seem to be affected, so that they reacted to things that weren't there? Or at least, to things the researchers couldn't see... Griffin, P.M. "Trouble" - Dory has tremendous potential, but she's too young either to protect herself from a lynch mob, or to mindspeak with Trouble, the cat who will become her familiar when she grows up - so he takes matters into his own paws. This story is continued in Catfantastic 4 "The Neighbor"; Griffin's stories in Catfantastic 2, 3, and 5 are unrelated, unfortunately. Lackey, Mercedes "SKitty": See my review of Lackey's _Werehunter_, which contains all the SKitty stories to date. Mathews, Patricia Shaw "The Game of Cat and Rabbit" - Another ship's cat story, but this is an ordinary, non-bioengineered cat (although the narration is much more sophisticated than Wart's, for example). The ship has a crew of 2, counting the cat - and an unwanted, invisible passenger that *sounds* like a rabbit. (No, this is not a rip-off of Norton's novel _Plague Ship_.) Mayhar, Ardath "From the Diary of Hermione" - Hermione is a 19th century professional familiar, but her human associate recently made a serious error in judgment. The style is a deliberate imitation of a certain type of old-fashioned diarist, capitalizing words at odd intervals to indicate emphasis (like Miss Climpson in the Lord Peter Wimsey novels, but less energetic). Hermoine reappears in Catfantastic 2, 3 and 5, but not 4. Miller, Ann and Rigley, Karen Elizabeth "It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's...Supercat!" - The narrator is a science fiction writer who actually *has* seen UFOs. Her cat, with neutral coloring, eyeglass-markings, and a timid disposition, is named Clark Kent. :) Norton, Andre "Noble Warrior" - The title is just the English translation of the main character's name, Thragun Neklop, a *real* Siamese cat, given by a princess to a British East India Company officer in thanks for saving her father's life. Upon Thragun's arrival in England, he finds that even this strange country has thewada - house elves or brownies, in English terminology, but don't think `Harry Potter's Dobby' here. Hob doesn't do housework; he plays spiteful tricks, sometimes fatal, if he's crossed. A `Noble Warrior' story appears in each volume of Catfantastic (5 so far). Incidentally, Thargun is the first to say, in #2, that a house guard and a thewada normally have very little to do with one another. Scarborough, Elizabeth Ann "Bastet's Blessing" - Shuttle is left behind when his archeologist companion heads out for the excavation season in Egypt. Soon Dr. Mercer is facing the old Imhotep two-step, and her best defense is her soulwalking cat. (After all, in life the ancient Egyptians worshipped cats.) Shuttle's speech patterns are very dignified; he sounds as though he stepped out of a Victorian novel into the home of a modern archaeologist. Upon his first meeting with Dr. Mercer at an animal shelter, although she can't understand his speech: "Madam, please disregard my present habitation. I was evicted from my former lodgings because of xenophobic tendencies toward my species..."
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by Andre Norton
by Andre Norton
by Andre Norton
by Andre Norton
by Denise Little
