Scott Simon's animals

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, memoirs, essays, animals, pets

When I was fourteen, late one afternoon I caught a large female praying mantis. She was a beauty, more than five inches long. At first she fought, stabbing me with the spines on her forelegs, but soon the warmth of my hand calmed her. I took her home and tied a thread around her thorax, carefully not too tightly and avoiding restricting her legs or wings. She could fly on her "leash".

At nightfall I tied the end of her thread to the bedpost and went to bed. Later I suddenly woke up, and sat up. This apparently startled the mantis, for she flew right into my face! This is what I saw just before she crashed into my forehead. I used tiny fingernail scissors to cut the thread, opened my window and let her fly out into the night. (Image information below*)

Scott Simon's first pet was a bit more prosaic. He caught a grasshopper, named it Hoppy, and with his father's help put it in a jar and perforated the lid. He gave it various leaves and bits of grass to find out what it would eat. To no avail. In two days Hoppy died.

Scott Simon's memoir/essay collection Ulysses S. Cat and Other Animals I Have Known records this vignette, illustrated by Liana Finck. Her line drawings spice up the many chapters of the book.

He had better success with a succession of more robust pets and other animals. Probably the shortest-lived was a hamster named Bagel; about two years.

Ulysses S. Cat is full of cute, interesting, heart warming stories about a magisterial white cat named Gato Blanco, a poodle named Daisy, Bagel the hamster, and numerous other animals including a zebra named Stripey (spoiler: imaginary). The whole family (Scott and Caroline have two adopted daughters) had many adventures with all the animals, theirs and others', that entered their lives.

Scott likes to narrate a pet's thoughts. He also attributes literary and artistic talents, particularly to Daisy, for whom he imagines an embroidered scarf reading CUTE IS CURRENCY. His blog contains her haikus, such as

Why the rush, rush, rush?
You have got to stop and sniff
Who has gone before

A pet, being shorter-lived than we are, forces us to enjoy the moment. A salutary thought: One of our days is seven days to a dog. No wonder they pack into each day as much experience as possible!

Scott Simon is a professional wordsmith. The wonderful, fluid prose in the book shows he is among the best at the craft. His joy in the animals reminds me to enjoy our cat while we can (she's 16 already).

*I couldn't find a suitable illustration of "Mantis attack" online, so I prompted the GPT Image 2 engine in OpenArt to create this one for me.