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Product Description
"A cross between Kerouac's "On the Road" and "Animal Hospital". That's not something you get to say every day. London girl Clare de Vries' account of her road trip across America with her 19-year-old, chocolate-brown Burmese cat, Claudius, is nutty, neurotic and honest de Vries is funny, fast and self-deprecating." - "Conde Nast Traveller". Clare de Vries dreamed of chucking in her job and Thelma and Louise-ing it around the United States. Which is exactly what she did. Except that Louise was her nineteen-year-old chocolate brown Burmese cat Claudius. From celebrity pet hair stylists in New York to brown bears in the Appalachians, from astronauts in Nashville to Elvis' shag ceiling in Graceland to voodoo snakes in New Orleans, the unlikely couple just about kept their Guccis intact and even learnt to read a map. That was before riding with psychic cowboys in Texas, losing vital body parts in the Grand Canyon, gambling with hoods in Vegas and spilling drinks over film stars in Hollywood.
Amazon.com Review
The question isn't, "What happens when a young British woman travels the southern United States with a 19-year-old cat?" The question is, "What happens when bad-news-in-stiletto-heels Clare de Vries does that?" The answer is unbridled hilarity. Pushing 30, De Vries is wallowing in an emotional void from the recent death of her mother when she arrives on the East Coast with her cat Claudius, a shipped-over sports car, and a fantasy of finding happiness in America. Her dreams are continually smashed: the car breaks down, the cat soon follows, and felicity is elusive as she encounters some of the most wacked-out creatures to ever call George Washington their founding father. The feisty troublemaker gets booted out of hotels, museums, parks, and planes for traveling with her feline friend, and is a chronic magnet for weirdness, be it in the form of felons, con men, psychics, or ghosts. The absurdity that De Vries calls her on-the-road life reaches only one high point in Vegas, when disguised as Cleopatra she ditches a stranger from whom she inadvertently borrowed, and immediately lost, $5,000. Interspersed within the insane and sometimes harrowing escapades that unfold on her six-month road trek are touching emotional insights about pets, loved ones, and solo travel that fill out what might otherwise be simply an entirely entertaining albeit madcap book. Graphic, sometimes shocking, and sarcastically hip, this is not a book for your cat-loving grandmother, but a wild example of what might happen when a young, slightly neurotic female overdosing on chutzpah heads out (nearly) alone to shake boredom from her life. In that goal at least, De Vries unabashedly succeeds. --Melissa Rossi
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