LISTEN TO YOUR KITTEN PURR

Unlike Nina Leen's book of cat photos (below), this tells the seemingly true story of a particular litter, first seen emerging from a burlap sack which has been fished from a pond by an SPCA agent. The story of how these kittens were abandoned, then, goes back to their mother's early days when she and her fellow cats on a farm developed a well-publicized friendship with a deer. A visiting family adopts one of the ""famous"" cats and cares for her indifferently; but everyone is enchanted, when she becomes pregnant, at the prospect of kittens--enchanted, that is, until the kittens become a nuisance. Which is where we came in. The rescued kittens are all adopted from the animal shelter (""they were the lucky ones,"" Hess acknowledges); and as for the mother, we learn later that she is abandoned when the human family moves, but finds a better home with the new residents of her old house. They care for her well and have her spayed by a vet. The photographer seems to have been there at every stage of the story, including the rescue, the birth, and the operation--which gives the book both a narrative and a documentary interest as well as the predictable appeal.