One of the most wonderful books I’ve read in ages. I read this twice in a couple of days: Pamela Binns’ mid-70s kids’ book about a black kitten who sets off across the rooftops of Rome to find the medicine that will save his dying sister. It reads rather like a Paul Gallico fable, having that magical succinct quality of Gallico… and also summoning up that feeling of – this is a story glimpsed out of the corner of your eye, somehow. Stories happening at the edges of things, or under your feet. The kinds of events that most people wouldn’t even notice…
It’s a series of meetings with feral cats and humble tortoises in sports cars, airline pilots, spoiled daughters of rich counts, sneering servants and corrupt cat emperors living in the ruins of the Forum. I loved every minute of this book because it’s written so gorgeously by someone who just understands cats and their behaviour so well (Flavio cleans his tail when he feels a bit scared and needs to think for a moment.)
It was published as a Grasshopper hardback in the mid-70’s. You rarely see their books in secondhand shops today. For some reason our school had lots of them, and that’s why one of my earliest obsessions was with the four books in the ‘Albert the Dragon’ series by Rosemary Weir. Doing a little online research and casting about, it seems to me that a lot of Grasshopper titles were in translation, or set in foreign lands. I don’t think ‘Flavio and the Wild Cats of Rome’ has ever been republished. It really ought to be, though.
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