Read Mo's book

An example. 8 photos, seven answers, about ten minutes. Yours is made the same way.

• 

  Mo
• 

  Mo

  2022

  Mo

• Mo

  2022

  For Mo, who watches the garden as if he owns it.

  Mo1

  Breed

  Long-haired tabby, says shelter

  Born

  2022

  Lives with

  Sanne, Deventer

  His garden

  The acacia tree

  Fears

  The blender

  Gets away with

  Sitting on the worktop

  Mo2

• Quarter past six, and the tapping starts.

  Mo3

  Tap. Wait. Tap.

  Quarter past six, Mo sits on the bedroom window sill and taps the glass with one claw. Tap. Wait. Tap. He keeps going until Sanne turns over in bed. Then he jumps up onto the pillow and lies down on her hair, settling in, and only then does the day properly begin.

  Mo4

• What the cat flap brings

  Every autumn Mo brings in leaves, one at a time, left on the mat by the back door. Never a mouse. Once he brought a whole acacia branch, twice his own length, dragged in from the garden. It was too big. He got as far as the cat flap and no further, and that was where the trouble began.

  Mo5

  

  Mo6
• 

  The lowest branch, his spot. I am not allowed to stand under it.

  Mo7

  His branch, his garden

  The acacia in the garden belongs to Mo. He sits on the lowest branch and looks down at the neighbours from up there, and Sanne is not allowed to stand underneath it. Indoors he has claimed something else entirely: the moving box from 2022 that she meant to throw out and now, somehow, cannot.

  Mo8
• 

  Mo9

  Stuck in the flap

  He wouldn't let go. With the acacia branch too big for the cat flap, Mo stood there for a quarter of an hour, half inside and half out, gripping it. Sanne broke the branch off from the outside to free him. The piece he had been holding is still behind the sofa, exactly where it landed that day.

  Mo10

• 

  Mo11

  

  Mo12
• 

  Mo13

  On the branch in the garden. He is watching the neighbour.

  Mo14

• Rules Mo has broken

  • No cats on the worktop
  • Banned for three weeks
  • Back on the worktop
  • Sanne looks the other way

  Mo15

  The worktop war

  Mo sits on the worktop while Sanne cooks. She banned it once and held firm for three whole weeks, refusing every time he jumped up. In the end she lost anyway. Now he sits up there again, watching the pan, and Sanne looks the other way, as if the rule had never existed at all.

  Mo16

• 

  Mo17

  The sound of the blender

  The blender is the one thing that undoes Mo completely. He hears the plug go into the socket, and before the switch is even flicked, he is gone from the room. He runs and wedges himself behind the washing machine, a gap he no longer really fits into anymore, and waits there until it is over.

  Mo18

• The bag that won

  Once Mo found a plastic bag in the garden and stared it down for half an hour, flat to the ground, tail fat with concentration. Neither of them moved. Then a gust of wind took the bag and it blew away across the garden. Mo got up and walked inside as if he had won the standoff himself.

  Mo19

  

  Mo20

• How Jesse named him

  Jesse calls Mo 'the fox', and it is because of the tail: reddish at the tip, twice as thick as the rest of him. Jesse saw him from behind in the garden once and thought, for a moment, that Sanne had a fox out there. The name stuck, and Jesse is still the only one Mo lets pick him up.

  Mo21

  

  Mo22
• 

  Mo23

  His tail is bigger than his head. In photos he looks fully grown. In real life he is the size of a loaf of bread.

  Mo24

• The acacia still drops its leaves and Mo still brings them in, one at a time, on the mat by the back door. The branch he wouldn't let go of is behind the sofa. Sanne still isn't allowed to stand under his spot on the lowest branch, and he still watches the neighbours from it, tail fat, like he owns the garden.

  Mo25
  

  The fox in the garden, still on his branch.

  Mo26

• This book was made for Mo, from the words and photos of the people who love Mo.

  bookofmypet.com