Diary of a Killer Cat, by Anne Fine

Staff Review by Chris Saliba

Diary of a Killer Cat is an often hilarious story told from the cat’s point of view.

Tuffy is your typical house cat. He likes chasing mice, birds and dragging rather unsavoury things into the house. All hell breaks loose when Tuffy hauls a dead white rabbit through his cat flap.

The rabbit belonged to the neighbours.  Tuffy’s owner, Ellie, and her keeping-up-appearances parents are justifiably mortified. Comic scenes ensue when the parents try to restore the rabbit to his hutch and pretend they know nothing about it. Tuffy himself adopts an insouciant attitude. These humans can be so over the top in their reactions to normal cat behaviour. They’re so precious!

Diary of a Killer Cat, as the title suggests, is Tuffy’s own story. The reader is entertained to a cat’s eye perspective on the world. We go deep into the feline mind to find out what it thinks of humans and their shock-horror attitude to normal, healthy recreational kitty pursuits.

Tuffy himself is an amusing and often blasé narrator. He’s certainly seen the world in his time and can’t see what all the hullabaloo is about when he brings dead mice and birds into the house. But all is not as it appears (especially the business with the dead rabbit) and Tuffy has been judged a little too harshly.

Anne Fine cleverly begins Diary of a Killer Cat with this mystery of the dead rabbit and hooks the reader into finding out what actually happened to the poor creature. Along the way there are plenty of laughs, especially the passages where Tuffy chats to his cat pals Bella, Tiger and Pusskins.

This is an often hilarious book. Reading it put me in a very cheery mood.

Recommended age: 7 upwards

Diary of a Killer Cat, by Anne Fine. Published by Puffin Modern Classics. ISBN: 9780141335773  RRP: $16.95