Last of the Plum Crazy! books (at least, that my library has available). More daily life of Plum the tabby cat and the younger kitten Snowball. In this one, it seems Snowball has calmed down a lot- hardly any more biting except when she gets very agitated by something, then she takes it out on Plum (like after getting her nails clipped). There’s two episodes in this one- first a flashback of Plum when a kitten, and then of similar incident including Snowball current timeframe- where a cat gets into the ceiling when the panel is opened up during spring cleaning. This was very familiar to me- either I saw something similar in another Japanese cat story, or I once browsed this when at the library? Not sure. In this volume, the cats continue to show more human-like thoughts and motivations- so I didn’t like it quite as much as the first two volumes, but still very cute and funny regardless.
The son’s friend and his older brother keep having conflict over the affections of the kitten they adopted, Oreo (re-named Buck, ugh! Oreo was a better name!) Snowball overhears people talking and thinks she’s going to be put out of the house, so she tries to be on good behavior, but her actions are misconstrued (again) and instead they think she’s sick, acting so unlike her normal self. The cats once again participate in holidays in ways that seem too humanlike- talking about the New Year (funny that it was 2020 in the story, when this book was published in 2010), and what their dreams will mean. They deal with frustrations of doors being closed- with a lot about paper-paneled doors that the cats can tear open (of course they’re not supposed to) and the family tries to figure out how to stop Snowball from destroying the paper door. Snowball searches for the warmest spot when it gets colder (there was a very similar bit in Fuku Fuku). Plum once brings an injured bird into the house. Snowball finally figures out some of “adult cat-speak” (still weird to me) and determines to teach the other kittens the same, but just gets frustrated. Valentine’s Day arrives, but this episode ends up being more about the people in the household- the son and his friend discussing who got chocolates from whom- and feeling left out- so then the cats step in and give the boys chocolates to assuage their feelings.
Borrowed from the public library.