MY CAT PEARL

All about ""my cat Pearl,"" sure enough, and what she does from one daybreak to the next: a book that begins temptingly and ends soothingly with the same words--""Every morning when I wake up there is something in my bed. I pull down the covers and there is Pearl""--but otherwise goes nowhere. Nothing occurs when ""she follows me to the bathroom"" or ""to the kitchen""--not even in the cheerful, sketchy, somewhat blobby pictures. The little action--Pearl playing with a toy or with the narrator--is random, and merely cattish; Pearl has no individual personality or quirks. The simplest books can be subtle; but this is so plain as to be essentially pointless.