The Killer Cat Strikes Back

Anne Fine's The Killer Cat Strikes Back is a very funny story for 8 year olds, told by a cat with strong opinions about his family's new hobbies.

What happens

Tuffy just wants his sunny spot on the sofa. Instead, Ellie's mum is sitting in it, flicking through a college brochure and deciding which class to take. She picks art. And her very first project is a portrait of Tuffy, copied from a photo of him glowering at her.

It gets hung above the sofa. Right where he can reach it (if he really stretches).

What follows is a gleeful run of "accidents". A claw gets stuck in a canvas. Four tubs of paint get knocked over on the patio. Lumpy clay pots somehow end up in pieces on the floor. And Tuffy has an excuse ready for every single one.

That's the joy of these books. Tuffy tells you the story himself and he's never, ever to blame. Chapters start with him owning up in his own grumpy way ("So whitewash my whiskers!") before explaining why none of it was really his fault. Your reader will know better, which is exactly where the laughs come from.

Then the tables turn. Ellie's dad hates the last ugly pot too, and he starts trying to trick Tuffy into breaking it for him. He wheedles. He smears it with cream. He hides a prawn inside it. And Tuffy, being a cat, refuses to do anything he's asked. Who could blame him when the man keeps calling him sweet?

There's a neat bit of plotting underneath the jokes too. A raffle, a rattling old car and a lost ticket all come together at the end, and Tuffy turns out to know rather more than he's letting on.

It's a short book in ten short chapters, so it works brilliantly for a newly confident reader or as a bedtime read-aloud. Grown-ups reading it aloud will probably enjoy Tuffy's sarcasm just as much. There's nothing here to worry about, just a cat being a cat and a family who never quite win.

What to read next

If this one goes down well, start them on The Diary of a Killer Cat, where Tuffy's week of mishaps begins with a dead bird on the carpet and gets a lot worse from there.