Socks

Socks by Beverly Cleary is a story for 8 year olds about a new baby arriving, told entirely from the point of view of the cat who was there first.

What happens

It opens outside a supermarket with a cardboard box and a sign saying kittens twenty-five cents or best offer. Socks is seven weeks old, white-pawed, and very keen to get out of the box. Debbie, who is selling him, is even keener that he does not go to the wrong family.

She gets her way in the end, although the method involves Socks spending twenty minutes shut inside a post box.

Then he lands with the Brickers, who are exactly the owners a cat would order. Warm laps. Meals on time. A Ping-Pong ball to chase down the hall. Socks is a very happy cat and he knows it.

And then they bring Charles William home.

What Cleary does so well here is refuse to explain any of it to him. Socks watches Mrs Bricker use her special high cat voice on somebody else. He works out that the baby is not a pet but "a new kind of person", one small enough to leave room on the lap for a cat. He decides half a lap will do. He is put on the floor anyway.

You can see exactly what is going on and he cannot, and that gap is the whole book. When the baby screams at Uncle Walter's bald head, Socks dives under a chair, because if the small one is frightened then something must be wrong. It is very funny and quite sad at the same time.

The one comfort left to him is the leftover formula that gets poured into his bowl. That is not going to end well for anyone.

One small thing to mention. Socks is properly miserable for a decent stretch of the middle, and he starts behaving badly because of it. If you have got a reader who takes an animal's feelings very personally, they will feel it. There is no cruelty and nobody is hurt, but the sad part is the point rather than a quick dip.

It is American, too. Kitty Litter, the mailman, a bazaar, cents. Nothing a reader will trip over, but it is there.

What to read next

If the pet's own version of family life is what appeals, Ribsy the dog gets a whole book to himself, and he starts his by climbing into the wrong car.