FINALLY!

It's been a long old road, but the new versions of Under The Paw and Talk To The Tail, with The Bear and Ralph as cover stars, are now available to purchase, casting the vastly inappropriate "cutesy" covers featuring anonymous posh actor kittens into the past forever. Getting to these covers has taken a lot of determination and time, as I wrote in this Guardian article.

Here are a few online retailers you can purchase the books from:

Under The Paw at amazon

Under The Paw at The Book Depository (with free worldwide delivery)

Under The Paw at Waterstones

Under The Paw at Guardian Bookshop


Talk To The Tail at amazon

Talk To The Tail at The Book Depository (with free worldwide delivery)

Talk To The Tail at Waterstones

Talk To The Tail at Guardian Bookshop

And some places to purchase the sequel to both books, The Good, The Bad And The Furry:

The Good, The Bad And The Furry at amazon

The Good, The Bad And The Furry at The Book Depository (with free worldwide delivery)

The Good, The Bad And The Furry at Waterstones

The Good, The Bad And The Furry Guardian Bookshop

The Good, The Bad And The Furry is published today!

Order The Good, The Bad And The Furry  from Waterstones.

Order The Good, The Bad And The Furry from amazon.

Order The Good, The Bad And The Furry from Kobo.  

The Cat With Seventeen Lives

A Guardian column about The Bear.

The Bear Gives A Rare Interview

Me: "Good morning, The Bear."

The Bear: "Technically speaking, we're thirty seven minutes into the afternoon, but hello."

Me: "Well, a lot of people these days seem to still say 'Good morning' if it's still any time before lunchtime. Most folk just accept that."

The Bear: "If 'most folk' told you to lick clean the bonnet of Jeremy Clarkson's sports car after he'd driven recklessly through a muddy ford near his Cotswolds hate palace, would you? I'm just saying: accuracy never hurt anyone, and can alleviate a lot of very harmful confusion in the world."

Me: "Ok. I'll remember that. So, The Bear. Readers of Under The Paw and Talk To The Tail know your story now: your humble beginnings, being found in a carrier bag on the side of the motorway, then being rescued, moving to Norfolk with me and my ex, constantly having to put up with Shipley whacking the top of that cardboard box used to sleep in... right up until now, living with me, Shipley, Ralph, Roscoe, my girlfriend Gemma, and that muntjac deer who sometimes hangs around in the garden."

The Bear: "Hold on. So you're saying that I was struggling a bit, and you came along, and made everything better, by putting me in a couple of books and posting photos of me on the Internet for thousands of people to see?"

Me: "No. I wasn't saying that at all. I'm sure if you'd been rescued by someone else, who didn't go on to live with someone who had a career as a writer, you'd also have had a very nice life. I'm just stating the facts: you were once heartlessly abandoned. Now you live in quite a nice warm house. Constant supply of biscuits on tap. Several Peter Ackroyd books within easy reach. Lots of comfy surfaces. That sort of thing."

The Bear: "I would like to point out at this juncture that they were the wrong kind of biscuits until recently. The cheaper brand with the weird green ones in that I hate. I mean, who ever heard of a green cat biscuit? What's in it? Spinach?"

Me: "I'm sorry. These are austere times to be a writer. My house had needed lots of maintenance recently. I admit, however, that trying to save money on biscuits was a mistake. I have now rectified it. Moving on... How do you feel about the way I've portrayed you in the books? Is it accurate?"

The Bear: "I think the best I can say about it is that it is an accurate portrayal of a few aspects of my character: the aspects, perhaps, that face you, or at least those that you choose to see. I have many other aspects, but I can appreciate that you have an agenda, and may choose to ignore them. I'm used to being misrepresented, though. I mean - look at me. I was named The Bear, yet it would be patently obvious even to a myopic person in their eighties who'd neglected to get checked out at Vision Express for several years that the animal I am most reminiscent of aside from a cat is an owl.

Me: "I noticed that on the day that I finished writing Talk To The Tail, I'd only left the manuscript unattended for about four minutes, but came back to find you on top of it. You had very muddy paws at the time. Was that some sort of comment on the content?"

The Bear: "I felt, at first, a little disappointed that I didn't have a bigger role in the book, that you gave a little bit too much time to Shipley's swearing, Janet's thyroid condition, and Ralph's habit of meowing his own name at the top of his voice at 4am in the morning. And those horses? What was all that about? I calmed down afterwards, and saw that I'd perhaps overreacted. Later on, though, I was disappointed with the paperback cover. You've never even met that kitten on it. It was just some actor kitten. Let's face it: the book doesn't even have a kitten in it."

Me: "I've come to kind of think of it as a Trojan kitten whose job it is to sneak all the animals in the book into readers' houses."

The Bear: "We both know that's nonsense. Your publishers chose the cover, and you had more or less zero say in it. You and I both know I should have been on the cover, cleaning my arse, or looking dolefully into the readers eyes and winning their hearts with my torn ear, and that that would have been a truer reflection of the book's content."

Me: "I notice that you caught your first mouse not all that long ago. You're seventeen now. That took you a while, didn't it? At least, I think you caught it. I can't be sure, as I only saw you with it when it was dead. You could have just claimed it, after Shipley or Ralph got bored of kicking it around the front room."

The Bear: "I caught it. It was pissing about by the compost heap, and I happy-pawed the little gobshite senseless. Nextdoor's cat Biscuit will back me up."

Me: "Speaking of Biscuit: How's that working out for you?"

The Bear: "Good, actually. I'm making progress. I pressed my nose against the kitchen window and stared at her the other day and she didn't even do a projectile grass vomit on the tiles. We've had a couple of scraps recently, but it's that kind of play-fighting that you do when you fancy each other."

Me: "Sure. How are your legs today? You seem to be doing that slightly camp walk quite a lot recently."

The Bear: "It's not "camp". It's just arthritis. We all get it. I'm actually in fantastic health, for my years."

Me: "It is true: You've never looked better. Those scabs on your ears have cleared up, and the many expensive tests the vet recommended earlier this year that I shelled out for turned out to be for nothing."

The Bear: "You've not had much luck at the vet's recently, have you? Y'know, what with that, and the feral you took to have his balls cut off and get tested for FIV, who then ran off?"



Me (coughing): "Changing the subject. You're my cat now, b..."

The Bear: "No, I am my cat."

Me: "Ok, I'll rephrase that. You live with me and my girlfriend now, but before that you lived with me and my ex, and before that you lived with my ex's ex. Do you feel there's any kind of stigma attached to that?"

The Bear: "Not really. You're the one who keeps going on about it."

Me: "You get on well with Gemma, though. We sometimes joke that if the two of us ever split up, she'll have to take you, to keep the trend going.

The Bear: I guess that could happen. I like her very much. Plus, she doesn't listen to those terrible 1970s folk albums that you do, or voice what she presumes to be my thoughts in a fake posh accent that makes me sounds like I'm some ageing homosexual ex-presenter of Jackanory who's never done a hard day's work in his life."

Me: "I wouldn't feel too singled out on that front, if I were you. I talk to a lot of animals in a fake posh voice. I'm always saying a braying pretend upper-class "Hellooo!" to that horse who lives down the road.

The Bear: "The one who looks like Todd Rundgren? I know. He told me, and he thinks it's WEIRD."

Me: "Really? I didn't realise you wandered that far any more, what with the arthritis and everything."

The Bear: "There are a lot of things you don't know."



Me: "I'm currently working on my third cat-themed book, to follow Under The Paw and Talk To The Tail, and there is a pilot for a prospective sitcom inspired by the books being written in America. Do you have any hopes for the content of these?"

The Bear: "I would hope that you might not go into too much detail about my irrational dislike of rain, or my more experimental bowel movements, particularly the incident earlier this year with your original vinyl copies of Neil Young's Doom Trilogy. I'd hope that, if such a sitcom happens, the cats in it still have their claws - both metaphorically and physically speaking. More generally, I would also hope that that small novelty Santa Claus hat you bought from Pets At Home the other week will not be coming out of the kitchen drawer at any point in the near future."

Me: "Thank you for your time, The Bear. I'll let you get back to sleep now."

The Bear: "That's ok. I see it's raining out. Before you go out to get me that turkey you mentioned earlier, could you just move that piece of protective cardboard you've had covering the "Y" section of your record collection? No big reason. I just feel it makes the room look a bit shabby."

Read more about The Bear in Under The Paw and Talk To The Tail

The World's Most Famous Busker's Cat (An Interview I Did Earlier This Year)

It’s early afternoon on a sunny spring Saturday in London, and Covent Garden’s Neal Street is bustling with the usual mixture of tourists and hipsters. Amidst a crowd of fifty or sixty of them, a busker sings Molly’s Lips, a song written by the Scottish band The Vaselines and made famous by his favourite band, Nirvana. His look is pretty archetypal for his trade: long black coat, jeans, beard, floppy, collar-brushing hair. What makes him unusual is that in front of him sits a medium-sized ginger cat, in a scarf. As people mill around him, taking photographs, the cat sits perfectly still, like a small ginger Buddha, barely flinching even when a huge four by four passes along the street within a few feet of his nose. 

“As far as I know, I’m the only person who does this in the UK,” James Bowen tells me, leaning down to stroke the head of Bob, the ginger moggy who accompanies him everywhere he goes. “I heard about a guy in New York who walks around with a cat on his head, but not here. Lots of dogs and some ferrets, but no cats. I wouldn’t actually recommend it. I think Bob’s a one off.”

It was almost five years ago that James, a former heroin addict, met Bob, a poorly stray who hung around the assisted housing where he lived in Tottenham. Having nursed him back to health, he not only realised that Bob wanted to stay by his side, but that he was perfectly happy to ride around on his shoulders and sit patiently with him while he busked. At first, Bob would trot into town alongside James unshackled, but, following a hairy incident when Bob got frightened by a man in an inflatable suit on Piccadilly Circus and ran away, he introduced a harness. “Some people have told me I’m cruel to keep him on a lead,” says James, “but if a cat is unhappy on a lead, it’s obvious. And Bob is happy with it.” In agreement, Bob gazes beatifically up at him, before – and I really have to pinch myself as I watch this - giving him a high five with his paw.

 Soon, James and Bob became London celebrities, whose fans would bring Bob daily treats and clothing (“his wardrobe is much bigger than mine,” says James). As an author of two books about cats, I remember my readers sending me photos of the pair of them as far back as 2008. Now their adventures have been recorded by James in A Street Cat Named Bob: an instantly bestselling memoir that, beside its heartwarming tale of their friendship, offers an insight into the injustice of life on the streets that’s by turns frustrating and life-affirming. “My life really can be divided into two periods: Before Bob, and After Bob,” says James. “I feel blessed every day to know this cat. Some people have asked me if they can buy him, and I always reply with the same question: ‘Would you sell me your firstborn child?’.”

  A Street Cat Named Bob
  Under The Paw
  Talk To The Tail

Happy Birthday To The Bear (Sort Of)

It's The Bear's 17th birthday today. Well, it's not technically his birthday, because, since he was found in a plastic bag at the side of the motorway as a kitten (before being rescued by a kind stranger and taken to a pet shop), nobody really knows his exact date of birth. But he should have one, and we know he is definitely 17 some time in 2012, so here at Under The Paw HQ, we have decided to make today the day, and buy him some treats. He's a touch arthritic these days, and sometimes Shipley gives him a little bit of a hard time, but he looks pretty good for his age, don't you think?

Read more about The Bear in Under The Paw and Talk To The Tail

Ralph And The Hedgehog Who Lives In My Garden: A Burgeoning Interspecies Romance

You can see how pleased my cat Ralph here is to be friends with the hedgehog who lives in my garden: his look tells you in no certain terms that he's very aware that, out of all the cats in the neighbourhood, the hedgehog who lives in my garden has picked him.

What I like most about my cat Ralph's relationship with the hedgehog who lives in my garden is how comfortable they seem to be to just be themselves around one another.

I think it's clear from the hedgehog who lives in my garden's body language here that he really likes my cat Ralph on an all-round level. It's not just one of those flash in a pan hedgehog-cat romances that burn bright for a week or two then peter out.

Sometimes my cat Ralph and the hedgehog who lives my garden will challenge one another to a race. Ralph is a generous cat, so he always gives the hedgehog who lives in my garden a head start.

I like the honesty of this shot: It's like my cat Ralph is saying to the hedgehog who lives in my garden "You have fleas, I have fleas, so why should we lie about that fact, or be bashful about scratching ourselves in front of one another?" and the hedgehog is saying "Amen to that, brother."

Under The Paw 

 Talk To The Tail

Talk To The Tail is out in paperback today!

Have you ordered YOUR copy yet?


Some nice things people have said about the book:

"If you think this very funny book is just about cats, you will be joyfully mistaken. Talk to the Tail also magnificently covers everything from depressed tigers to judgmental horses to mischievous alter ego spaniels to Jon Bon Jovi. I, myself, am allergic to cats, but with Tom's realistic and descriptive powers, I'm definitely not allergic to this book." - Rich Fulcher

"Even a confirmed and partisan dog person such as myself cannot fail to be charmed by Tom Cox's gently seductive prose and his quirky tales of singular feline behaviour. A delight." - Stuart Maconie

"If you've ever been owned by a cat, you'll love this. Books about animals can be mawkish, but this one is often hilarious, occasionally sad, and full of the strangeness of sharing your life with a loved pet." -Woman's Weekly

"Warm, wryly witty, hilariously observed and more often than not, genuinely laugh-out-loud funny." -Easy Living

"A book with a sting in the tail that may give pause to even the most cynical petaphobe." - Mail On Sunday

Read my previous book, Under The Paw....

How Long My Cats' Tails Are

It appears that while I was away in Devon over the weekend, my nextdoor neighbours, Deborah and David, who were very kindly feeding my cats for me, decided to measure their tails, and see how they shape up next to the tail of their cat, Biscuit. They then proceeded to write the results on my kitchen blackboard*.

* For regular Under The Paw readers: Billy is the Bear's "other" name.

Read Under The Paw.
Read the sequel, Talk To The Tail.

Probably The First Photo Ever Taken Of Me With A Cat

Read about me and Felix in Under The Paw.
Read the sequel, Talk To The Tail.

For Black Cat Awareness Day: Some Pictures Of The Bear

The Bear, the most intellectual character featured in my books Under The Paw and Talk To The Tail, was originally the favourite cat of my ex's ex. Our relationship had its teething troubles, but we're still here, together. He is sixteen and a half now. I am sure that, in that time, he has used up far more than nine lives. He's moved house on umpteen occasions, lost a couple of bits of his ear, gone missing for over a month, got inexplicably stranded on the opposite side of a wide river, been punched into a wall by a tiny grey kitten, and, despite his gentlemanly advances, still can't seem to get his Last Of The Summer Wine romance off the ground with the aging ginger lady cat who lives nextdoor, Biscuit. He is a little wobbly around the haunches, but is in the largely terrific health, and by all appearances - despite being picked and sworn at by his gobby housemate Shipley every so often - happier than he's ever been.

I've known and lived with a lot of black cats over the years, but I don't think I've ever met one who summed up their magic and mystery as much as The Bear. Today is Black Cats Awareness Day - a celebration, instigated by Cats Protection, of black cats, who are all too often overlooked by prospective owners visiting rescue centres - so to mark it I thought I'd post a few of my favourite photos of my most spiritually noir of black cats....

Stuart Maconie on Talk To The Tail

"Even a confirmed and partisan dog person such as myself cannot fail to be charmed by Tom Cox's gently seductive prose and his quirky tales of singular feline behaviour. A delight." - Pies And Prejudice author/DJ Stuart Maconie on Talk To The Tail

How I Fell In Love With A Fat Ginger Stoner: Piece By Me From Today's Sunday Telegraph Stella Magazine

It wasn’t a slow burn thing between and Samson and me: I fell in love with him from the moment he first trespassed on my property. “Cat” would have been one description of him, but “ginger beach ball that just happened to have a cat’s head on top” would perhaps have been a more accurate one. He’d been the first feline interloper in the Norfolk house I’d moved into in summer 2004, and lacked the wiliness of alien cats who’d come through catdoors to steal my own moggies’ food before. As I found him munching away at the biscuit dispenser, he’d looked up at me in a casual, near stoned kind of way. Had he been able to speak, I’m certain his greeting would have ended in the word “Dude”.

It wasn’t until a month later that I found out Samson belonged to Ruby, the old lady who lived across the road. For years, Ruby had invited her neighbours to her beautiful Georgian house for Christmas drinks, and this year she’d extended the invitation to me and Dee. Since moving away from London in 2001, we’d pinged stressfully around Norfolk, from one problem neighbour to another, and here, in an 85 year-old’s living room, it seemed, finally, was a form of peace. Finding our mysterious roly-poly ginger trespasser sitting on Ruby’s sofa, adults perched around him like secondary citizens, was a bonus. Even now, when I think of the phrase “perfect neighbourhood”, I conjure up a picture of a small street with several dozen Rubys on it, all accompanied by happy marmalade cat.

I soon realised that Ruby’s relationship with Samson was an unusually close one. Her husband had died over two decades earlier, her three sons all lived far away, and, while she lived a social and sprightly life, Samson was her main companion. Her house was always fresh and airy, and looked immaculate. The exceptions were her sofas and armchairs, which were so violently slashed, one might have imagined a special task force of inept policemen had recently cut them open in a drugs raid. Then there were her hands. “He likes to give me little nips, from time to time,” she said, showing me cracked skin and knuckles raging dark purple with bruises.

I’ve written two books about my cats now, so my status as a lifelong feline lover is very much “out”, but back when I first met Ruby, I’d often find people surprised by my attachment to an animal often viewed as “for women”. Being a cat lover has led me to many unlikely friendships, none more so than the one I developed with Ruby over the next five years. She was an octogenarian church group regular with a passion for Debussy and Marks & Spencer thermals. I was a 30something agnostic with unruly hair, a beard, flares and a large collection of prog rock. Yet, in our cats, we found common ground. Before long, we were recommending books to one another, and I was accompanying her to classical music recitals in Norwich. She didn’t quite get to the stage of listening to my Atomic Rooster LPs, but she’d trustingly feed me neighbourhood gossip: the gardener who dressed up in women’s clothes, the hospital that was closed down due to philandering doctors and nurses, stories which neither of us found any less fascinating for being four decades out of date.

Sadly, I didn’t see a lot of Ruby in the months immediately preceding her sudden death, in spring 2009. I’d been somewhat AWOL amidst the demise of my marriage, and not made the effort to stay in touch I should have. After offering my condolences to her son, Jonathan, I asked what had happened to Samson. “He’s still here. Would you like him?” he said. I agonised. The idea of a large ginger cat who looked like he was addicted to class B drugs had its appeal, but I already had six cats of my own. Fortunately, a little research led me to Daniel and Louise, friends of a friend, who sounded interested in Samson.

Two days later, the couple collected him, and I watched as Jonathan made journey after journey into Ruby’s cupboard, emerging with more of the attendant paraphernalia of East Anglia’s most loved cat: a ceramic likeness, some Samson coasters Ruby had had custom made, and what I can best describe as a “feline skateboard”. “Oh, and he’s used to getting a chicken wing a day,” said Jonathan.

I hear Samson is still doing well now. Following his new diet, he appears to be clad in an oversized ginger jumper. He’s on dry-food only now, and scratching is not allowed. He’s still prone to the odd wander, though, and I like to think that these lead him through the catslap of a kindly neighbour, who will sate his appetite as his big blank moonface looks up at them. My street, meanwhile, feels just a bit colder without him and his owner.



Read more about Samson in Talk To The Tail!

Read the book before Talk To The Tail: Under The Paw!

The Under The Paw Cats Hanging Out In The Sun

Read more about Ralph, Shipley, The Bear and pals in Under The Paw and Talk To The Tail!

The Bear Photobombs Ralph

The Third Annual Toughest Cat Competition

Long time followers of the Under The Paw blog will be familiar with the Toughest Cat competition (see previous winners Grebo and Rufus Bugcat, above). It's simple: you send in pictures of your cats looking really hard, then my cats and I decide which is the hardest, while you try to (and sometimes do) sway the judging process by getting your friends to post enthusiastic comments like, "Oooh, I wouldn't want to come across him on a dark night!" This year the drill is the same: post a pic of your hard cat looking hard on the Facebook event page (preferable), or, if you're not on Facebook, send it to underthepaw@tom-cox.com*.

For 2011's toughest cats, there are better prizes than ever before. The winner will not only receive a £100 HAMPER of the addictive Applaws cat food, but a signed copy of Talk To The Tail, including within it an EXCLUSIVE illustration by the brilliant Jackie Morris of Kiffer, her sadly departed hard cat (see below). I met Kiffer in 2009, when I went cat-walking at Jackie's place in Pembrokeshire, formed an instant bond with him, and, upon hearing he had passed away, dedicated Talk To The Tail to him. You can read Jackie's wonderful blog here, and find plenty of pictures celebrating his life. Second and third place tough cats will each both also received a signed copy of Talk To The Tail. Entries close on March 31st, so don't waste any time in forcing your cats down to their local weight room, or perhaps just making them really irritated by withholding their favourite snacks for twenty minutes or so...


* NB: This email isn't in permanent use: I only open it up for comps such as this.