Read Mo's book
Mo is a long-haired tabby from the shelter who lives with Sanne in Deventer. His book has the cat flap, his branch in the acacia, the worktop war and how he got his name. An example. 8 photos, the answers to the questions, about ten minutes. Yours is made the same way.
MoMo
2022
MoMo
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
Mo2Quarter past six, and the tapping starts.
Mo3Tap. 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.
Mo4What 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
Under the acacia in October. The leaves that fall, he brings in. Mo6
The lowest branch, his spot. I am not allowed to stand under it.
Mo7His 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
Mo9Stuck 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
Climbing the acacia. He gets to the first branch, then he calls. Mo11
Among the red leaves of the vine. This is where he sits when the sun is on it. 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
Mo15The 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
He no longer fits back there. He goes anyway. Mo17The 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.
Mo18The 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
Half an hour of staring, and then the wind decided it. Mo20How 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
From behind, in the garden, he really does look like a fox. Mo22
Mo23His tail is bigger than his head. In photos he looks fully grown. In real life he is the size of a loaf of bread.
Mo24The 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.
Mo25The fox in the garden, still on his branch.
Mo26This book was made for Mo, from the words and photos of the people who love Mo.
bookofmypet.com
On screen and to download. €6.99, paid after the questions. Before you pay, we make the whole book free and show you the cover and the first pages: one free preview per person, while the day's previews last.