As it is with all good relationships, domestic skirmishes are their modus vivendi. Toe-to-toe they stand - Amory at six feet three, the cat at six inches - and eyeball-to-eyeball each other on every issue - whether or not to come when called, to recognize one's name, to take a trip, a pill, a bath or a walk on a leash, to be civil to New People, or even in an age when Thin Is In why anyone in his right mind would want to be the Last Fat Cat. We will not spoil 'The Cat Who Came for Christmas' by telling you who blinks first. Suffice it to say that in this hilarious battle, nine times out of ten it is not the cat.

The chapter titles tell the story - "The Great Compromise," "His Hollywood," "His Fitness Program," "His Foreign Policy," "His Domestic Policy." But there is much more, including the cat's memorable meetings with such notables as Walter Cronkite, George C. Scott, and the late Cary Grant, not to mention those with a cat psychiatrist, an afghan in Central Park, the Kamikaze Kitten and Herbert the Pigeon.

Here, too, is not just the story of one cat, but literally hundreds of others - from celebrity to literary cats, from the cats of movie stars and American Presidents to those of Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Aldous Huxley and T.S. Eliot. Indeed, in chapters like "His Roots" and "A Difficult Matter," there is a whole history of cats.

An enchanting true story that makes laughing out loud inevitable, 'The Cat Who Came for Christmas' is for anyone who has ever been owned by a cat - or any other pet.