Tuesday 25 April 2017

The Game of Cat and Lucy

Welcome to Sally's book-a-day-for-2017 blog. If unfamiliar with the blog, scroll down.

The Game of Cat and Lucy (Post 115)

The Game of Cat and Lucy (1999), is one of my favourites in this series. It deals with communication, friendship and family ties, and it's sf. 
Lucy, who is, by her own admission, an ordinary girl with brown hair and freckles, is part of an important experiment at the IAC - Institute of Animal Communication. For the space of a month, Lucy spends time every day with The Cat, a genetically modified feline who is the subject of the experiment. To put it simply, the Prof, who happens to be Lucy's dad, is working on a new neighbourhood watch system. Instead of human guards, who attract attention, or dogs, who need direction, he plans to use cats, which can prowl at night without being noticed and which are already in the habit or spending long hours in one place, snoozing. In order to get the information The Cat has, the Prof has fitted it with a vocaliser, which renders its answers in flat spoken English. The Cat cannot be paid, but it has been given a deal. It will work for a month (the space of a moon) and then may live in the place of its choice, and be cared for for life while the data is analysed its successors trialed.

Now it's up to Lucy to get as much information as she can from The Cat before his indenture ends. The Cat is an idiosyncratic beast, and, as Lucy soon finds, it has its own agenda.

I liked The Cat... and young Lucy. There was an Easter egg hidden in the text for anyone who might notice. I always hoped someone would mention it to me, but no one ever did. I did use the book once again in a much more recent story; The Peacock's Pearl (post 41), in which narrator Cat Mahal remembers a book from her childhood, given to her because her name is in the title.

About the Blog 

Sally is Sally Odgers; author, manuscript assessor, editor, anthologist and reader. She runs http://www.affordablemanuscriptassessments.com and Prints Charming Books. (Sally is me, by the way, and I am lots of other things too, but these are the relevant ones for now.)

The goal for 2017 is to write a post a day profiling the background behind one of my books; how it came to be written, what it's about, and any things of note that happened along the way. If you're an author, an aspiring author, a reader or just someone who enjoys windows into worlds, you might find this fun. The books are not in any special order, but will be assigned approximate dates, and pictures, where they exist. If you enjoyed a post, or want to ask about any of my books or my manuscript assessment service, post a comment and I'll get back to you.

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