It's Like This, Cat (Dover Children's Classics)

In 1966, I was in fourth grade. We moved from a nice suburb into projects in the city. I was a bit overwhelmed by the whole thing. My teacher got me this book to read and I loved it. Dave’s voice was clear and his stories were relevant to me and offered valuable insights about friends, parents, families, girls, the city, and cats. It speaks of a simpler, more innocent time, but the ideas transcend time.Nearly 60 years later, I just finished reading it again. It’s a wonderful story, for any age. The illustrations are delightful and brought me back instantly.Highly recommended.

I love this book. I first read this Newbery winner in Junior High, and even though the main character is a boy, I could still relate to his arguments with parents, desire to keep a stary cat, and his ever changing relationship to the world. As a kid I read the library copy, and later bought the paperback. This time I reread it as a kindle aged adult on my kindle- which included the illustrations- and still enjoyed it.Even though some of the text is dated (references to Harry Belafonte records and radio shows), the experiences are timelsss. I recommend this to any middle school aged kid. Because it was written in the 60's it can be considered historical fiction in some aspects, yet the broad emotions teenagers face is always contemporary: the details are just different.

This isn't the type of book that I'd really read again or pass along to everyone I know. But, the characters develop in a way that makes it possible for lessons to be learned. The main character of the book doesn't really get along with his dad but after adopting a cat, life just flows in a way that the kid starts seeing things through a different set of eyes. He starts to care about other people more. He creates new friendships and learns that life it's always bad, life changes and you manage to flow with it even if things don't always go your way. I'd recommend it to people who want to read to excerpts to upper elementary (4th-6th) or people who like cats. Characters are quirky and there's nothing blatant about "here's the lesson to learn, readers", yet, one can't help but feel better having read this book.

So, this was a book I had read back in my junior high school days. As the years passed, this book never totally left my mind. Several years back I looked for this novel on amazon and to my surprise it was there. To me "It's like this cat" takes me back to what was a simpler time in my life, this is probably a common theme for some people who have read it. Needless to say, I enjoyed it! Not being familiar with New York City at all since my childhood was spent in the midwest it was interesting to at least get a notion of what big city life could be like. There are references to "Gramercy Park", Manhattan, Coney Island, Times Square, the Hutchinson River Parkway Macy's & East 22nd Street where Dave and his family lived. Ms. Cheney Neville's book was set in mid-century America. Some people may consider the publication dated, maybe not enough action or just too sedate for our modern time. To me, the early sixties was a fun time and sadly a period which has faded into history. Hope you enjoy the book!

I’ve reread this book numerous times over the past 50 years! It never fails to move me.I bought this copy for my 11 year old grandson to enjoy. He loved it!

Award-winning kids' novels from the Sixties that still sells well today. A young inner-city youth gradually steps out of his rut, meeting a health-food nut and hooking up with paid modeling. Written entirely from his point-of-view, and very well done. Followed by BERRIES GOODMAN.

I recently re-read this book, which I'd originally read in the 70s when I was in about fourth or fifth grade. I found I enjoyed it a lot more as an adult reading about life through a young teenage boy's eyes in late-1950s NYC, than I did as a young person. The book covers about a year in the life of the protagonist, Dave, who is 14 and lives in an apartment in a middle-class part of Manhattan with his lawyer father and his asthmatic mother. To cool off after his frequent arguments with his dad (over such deathless subjects as Dave playing his new record too loud), Dave visits his eccentric friend Kate, who is your prototypical "crazy cat lady," always taking in strays and allowing her own female cat to breed kittens (which she seems to get rid of or find homes for, as several batches of them crop up throughout the book, but it's never addressed where the cats all go). At the beginning of the book, Dave adopts one of Kate's cats, a tom which Dave names "Cat" and bonds with over his father's (fairly mild by today's standards) objections. Dave's best friend Nick, who's a lot more interested in dating than in cats, is less than thrilled by Dave's new pet. But through Cat, Dave meets new friends, including his first girlfriend Mary (who is really more of a "friend" than a "date") and a troubled older boy, Tom. Dave also has some exciting adventures when Cat occasionally escapes or gets into trouble and Dave has to rescue him. By the end of the book, Dave is getting along better with his father and the lives of several characters in the story have improved.This book is fun to read now, largely because it's a slice of "old New York". Dave passes through many boroughs and neighborhoods on his various adventures, travelling by subway, bus and the Staten Island Ferry as well as his bike. Some of the neighborhoods and landmarks discussed in the book, such as Coney Island and the Peter Stuyvesant projects, have obviously changed over the decades, and frankly, if you're not from New York and don't have a little knowledge of the neighborhoods or the history of the city, the detailed discussions of how Dave gets from Point A to Point B will probably bore you just like they bored me as a kid (who had never been to New York). Dave listens to Belafonte records (something else I couldn't relate to as a kid, since Belafonte was something my parents listened to!), talks about beatniks, and goes to see "West Side Story" on stage (not yet a movie, even). The "space race" has probably not yet begun as it's not even mentioned in the book. The social mores of cat care have also changed a bit since this book was written; Kate is presented as a fairly responsible cat owner, but nowadays, no responsible cat owner would be allowing her female cat to breed litter after litter of kittens, and as previously mentioned, the book doesn't explain where exactly the kittens go to make room for the next batch. One kitten does meet an accidental gory end which frankly horrified me when I read the book at about age 11 and still seems jarring today, since nothing else that bad happens anywhere in the book. For all these reasons, this book is now pretty much a period piece.Even beyond that, I had issues with the book as a kid because a whole lot of the storylines just didn't seem to go anywhere. I kept waiting for Dave to make up with his childhood best friend Nick, but instead Nick never reappears in the story after he and Dave have a falling out. I couldn't really understand how Tom and Dave became so friendly given the rather large age difference between the two and the fact that they barely have any deep conversations. Tom has been to college and is in a serious relationship with a girl, and you'd normally expect someone Dave's age to be far more curious about these subjects than Dave is. Dave and his new friend Mary have fun together, but without any of the closeness (emotional, if not physical, since both these people are clearly too shy for a goodnight kiss let alone a makeout session) you'd expect from young teens getting into their first real relationship. And Dave's supposed troubles with his father seem really small. Perhaps this is my 1970s childhood, with its history of "afterschool specials" and teenage "problem" books talking, but the book seemed dull and unrealistic to me when I was young. Plus, if you like cats and pick this up based on the title, you may be disappointed because there are huge sections of it that Cat isn't in, as well as the aforementioned kitten death. Dave doesn't even have that many long conversations or thoughtful moments with his cat, and he often seems about as emotionally complex as a potato. In the end, the descriptions of now-historic New York City are the biggest thing this meandering book has going for it.

I loved this book as a child, for the illustrations as well as the story of a young boy maturing.