Yes, I'm a cat owner/lover, as is Mr Pratchett and inspite of some poor reviews I ordered it anyway. Glad I did.
I found it funny, clever and satirical. It's not a novel, so don't expect a minature dose of discworld. But as a treatise on the essence of "catness" it's a little gem.

Let me say that I'm a big Terry Pratchett fan. I have all his books, and love them. Which is why I ordered The Unadulterated Cat sight-unseen.

I was only a few pages into it when I thought to myself, this doesn't feel like Terry Pratchett's writing. It's curiously flat. His other books give me the feeling that practically every sentence is well thought out, either advancing the plot, or showing some interesting aspect of someone's character, or giving us some (perhaps twisted, but valid) insight into how the world works. And yes, of course the humor.

But this doesn't feel that way to me at all. Yeah, there are a few truisms along the way. But precious few (any?) of them felt like they had any real depth. OK, we all know that cats stare at the refrigerator a lot. And he mentions that. Several times. And we know that cats will hide under beds, or in other out-of-the-way places. And scratch you if you try to get them out. But is any of this breaking news?

Another thing that's few and far between is the humor. Yes, there are Pratchett-lines occasionally. Very occasionally. For example, describing humans' evolutionary ancestors, they're described as "... little crouching shapes with hairy chests, no forehead and the intelligence of a gameshow audience." Good line, but the few that are there are hardly enough to to save the rest of the book.

To be honest (and undoubtedly quite unfair to Mr. Pratchett), it feels (not that I'm saying this is what happened, but it *feels*) like it's something he threw together one afternoon, without too much thought.

Another way of describing it is that I have problems shaking the feeling that someone else wrote this, then Terry Pratchett came in as a "script doctor" and punched it up with a few suggestions and some cute one-liners. Again, I'm not saying this happened. But if someone had given me this book to read, and I didn't know the author, I'd find it hard to believe it when they told me it was Pratchett's. (Although some of the pieces of humor would seem familiar.)

Pratchett has a partner on this, artist Gray Jolliffe who provides cartoons on almost every page. What an absolute waste of time and paper. I'm sorry, but I have absolutely nothing good to say about them.

* They lack any sense of elegance in the drawings (they verge on amateurish)
* They convey no real emotion (the expressions on their faces are all cartoonish)
* I got no sense of insight into cats from them.
* The drawings just plain aren't funny. In. The. Least.

Compare them with, for example, Pratchett's wonderful The Last Hero, with Paul Kidby's brilliant depictions of (among many others) the Mona Lisa, Rincewind and Lord Vetinari. Now, sure, Kidby's work is far more sophisticated than Jolliffe ever tries to be, but it's certainly possible to breathe life into even simple line sketches. See for example, Gary Patterson's "Curiosity" at http://www.nannavalon.de/Cats/Curiosity.jpg. But there's no life in Jolliffe's work here. For me, the drawings just got in the way.

So why did I give this book a two-star rating? It seems I can't give only one star to anything that Terry Pratchett does.

I guess the bottom line is that unlike any of Pratchett's other books, if I were to lend it to someone and never got it back, I wouldn't miss it in the least. Would I ever re-read it. Doubtful. Which is too bad.

The Unadulterated Cat is a slight book, a set of cat humor pieces written by Terry Pratchett and illustrated by Gray Joliffe. There's nothing wrong about the book per se - the humor isn't bad and the scratchy illustrations fit the book well - but there's nothing particularly interesting about it either; it's basic and only occasionally original cat/pet humor. Entertaining, but not really worth picking up unless you're big on cat humor or a Pratchett completionist.

Terry Pratchett provides a whole new perspective on cats. This book has Pratchett's great sense of humor along with our naturally funny friends. It's a great combination.

I have to include first that I am a huge fan of Terry Pratchett's works. I love his Discworld-series and I find the Tiffany Aching stories superb. The reason why I ordered this book as well was to further expand my collection with another masterpiece. However, after having read all the Discworld and Tiffany Aching novels this particular piece was a disappointment.

First of all, the style was not like a story-telling but a jigsaw of shorter (sometimes with reappearing motifs) stories and pieces of advice. The text itself is not something you would enjoy after having expected a detailed universe like Discworld and if you are not an owner of a cat you might not laugh at typical cat-like behaviours mentioned in this book.

This book is not bad. Its only defect is that it is very short. You just have to know that you will find it amusing only if you do not expect something else it can give you. If you own a cat and you like Terry Pratchett's style and humour then buy this book. In any other case you should consider skipping it.