Things are rarely as they seem. Especially with Maria and her cats at work. And for those who truly love, the impossible is only an illusion. The gattara or cat lady is a part of Roman history. These are people that help feed the population of cats in Roman public spaces. In this story it follows the life of cats within the care of a lady named Maria. A cat named Queen Bast has 3 kittens and is talking to Maria about them. After the kittens have eaten, Maria is telling them a story about the Cardinal Mezzaluna who’s sends the cats food. But perhaps the moment the crazy cat lady motif truly jumped the shark was with the song Buttload of Cats on an episode of the television series Crazy Ex-Girlfriend earlier this year. Rebecca Bunch walks herself down to the Lonely Lady Cat Store. “The smell is overwhelming inside / This is the future smell of my house / It’s the smell of my dreams that have died,” she sings. “When you’re a permanent bachelorette / It’s mandatory that you go out and get / A buttload of cats / Oh, yeah!” By the request from the Mezzaluna, he asks Maria to help him with his dying wish. There was a lady named Anne-Marie that Mezzaluna was in love with. He wished to know if she remembered him after many decades apart. He believed that Maria would be able to find her. Fresh, funny and for anyone who’s ever felt astray, CAT LADY will help you belong – because a woman always lands on her feet.

She tells Bast and the kits that kindly Cardinal Mezzaluna, who makes sure the cats get fed, had a mission for the Cat Lady, which also shows that he accepts her abilities. He confesses that he loved a woman, Anne Marie, but due to his vows, they swore to part and never see each other again in this life. In his dying state, he longs to know if she remembers him.

Crazy Cat Lady is, zoals op de achterflap vermeld, een geïllustreerde samenvatting van het leven als kattenvrouwtje. Een heel mooie, vrolijke, opbeurende samenvatting! A modern day folktale comes to life in this narrative poem of 125 tightly metered rhyming couplets ending with a message. Loonstra haar tekeningen maken dat je Crazy Cat Lady steeds opnieuw ter hand neemt. Het is een feest van herkenning voor mensen met poezen! Het is ook het ideale geschenkje voor je vriendin met katten dat je haar makkelijk per post kan opsturen om deze eenzame (hoewel; mensen met katten zijn nooit eenzaam) dagen wat op te fleuren. Blij worden zal ze met dit pareltje. Er staan tips in om zelf speelgoedjes voor je kat te maken, flowcharts om te volgen, weetjes over poezen,… Mezzaluna briefly describes his love with Anne-Marie as, “For though the love we felt ran deep, I had made other vows to keep, which made our love a grievous wrong.” Their relationship felt almost forbidden. There is a sense of priority and love in the form of sacrifice and holding vows. From glossy fashion magazines celebrating the feline-human relationship – Cat People, Puss Puss – to Taylor Swift and Katy Perry’s unashamed adoration of their feline pets, the stereotype is being recalibrated. CatCon Worldwide, a new conference celebrating cat culture, has, as its core value, the desire to “change the negative perception of the crazy cat lady and prove that it is possible to be hip, stylish, and have a cat”.

The inception of the “crazy” moniker is harder to pin down, but its connotations of hysteria are an old gender stereotype. Added to this, the extreme end of the modern “crazy cat lady” stereotype has more than a few cats, which is unusual. Eleanor Abernathy, for example, has cats dripping off her: she is, essentially, portrayed as a mentally ill, alcoholic, compulsive hoarder. I don't read huge amounts of poetry these days but if I do I like it to really be memorable and special. Cat Lady most certainly was. For starters how could I not read a book with this title? But apart from that I was really glad that I did. This is a special little book of beautiful words. To any tourist in Rome, Old Maria may seem to be an eccentric soul who feeds stray cats and thinks she can talk with them. Things are rarely as they seem. In fact, she can. A dying cardinal has given Maria a final, urgent wish. His time is running short. On the surface, it seems impossible to grant. I've never been one for poetry, but since blogging I've been asked to review a few books that are either poetry books or tell their stories in poetry form. This is a genre that is growing on me and I am becoming to love. Well done Mary on creating a beautiful story, that is not only heat-warming, but emotional, both happy and sad at the same time. Thank you for sharing the beauty of the Gattara in Rome.An ode to finding your people and a celebration of the small things that bring us together’ Emma Gannon Dawn O’Porter challenges the stereotypes of the typical ‘cat lady’ with this beautiful and emotional read’ Reader review⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Upper portion of a bronze figure of Bastet holding a cat aegis. From the late period. Dated 600 BC. Photograph: Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images Mary M. Schmidt was a student in Rome during the ’60s and came to know the many feral cat colonies. She is the author of poetry, prose, and was a member of Poets Against the Iraq War. She resides outside Washington DC with her cat Graycie.

In the memorable short story Cat Person (2017), Kristen Roupenian inverts the cat lady trope by giving her male protagonist, Robert, a couple of pet cats. She employs the presence of Robert’s felines as a symbol that Margot uses to construct her image of him. “We decide that it means something that a person likes cats instead of dogs,” said Roupenian in an interview. But there is something sinister going on. Margot never sees the cats, and wonders if Robert has lied about them. So what is it about pretending to have cats that might endear Margot to him in a sexual setting? Is he using his cats to lure her in?Mia has made all the right choices. She’s married, she has the nice house, the good career. But life isn’t about fitting into a box. And there’s another woman inside her who’s just clawing to get out . . .

Maria uses a spell to detect the Cardinal's love and it pulls across the sea to America where Anne-Marie reveals that she respected his vows and his love--she never forgot and never took another love. The Cat Lady is able to let him know before he dies, after which the feral cats of Rome lead Mezzaluna to his afterlife. Een klein boekje, zakformaat als je grote zakken hebt. Super vrolijke en aantrekkelijke cover en die stijl wordt doorgezet doorheen het hele boek. Veel te lezen valt er niet maar dat geeft niet want er valt zo veel mooist te zien. En te lachen.Really gets the reader to think about what matters in life Unputdownable and completely wonderful!’ Reader review ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ There is fun and frolics as well as poignant and sad moments. Quite simply this is a short, beautiful book of poetry, especially appealing to the cat lover no doubt. 4 paw prints from me!