The Incredible Journey
While writing about Socks yesterday, it occurred to me that my favorite book about a cat was actually about a cat and two dogs. Also, while I really liked Socks as a kid, I adored The Incredible Journey by Sheila Burnford. And I read it way more times than I ever read Socks, if only because I read it as I became a tween (a word that didn't exist then) and an early teen, whereas Socks was DBP (not to mention being for littler kids).
What I remember about this book
The premise of this one is simple: pets have been taken to somebody's house is to pet sit them. They set off on their own to get home to their owners, who they believe have gone there. The pets are two dogs: a Golden Retriever, a pointy-eared and barrel-chested dog, and a Siamese cat. The animals do not talk. They do not wear pants or do things that animals couldn't do, even if they sometimes do things that most animals might not do - like travel all the way across Canada, or whatever. I don't remember them being anthropomorphized, but I suspect that were I to read it now, I'd find emotions attributed to those animals, at least a bit. Because man, was I subject to wild emotional swings whilst reading this book. My specific memories are hazy, but I'll say what I remember, even if it's, um, drastically wrong.
On their trek, the animals face dangers of many sorts: one of the dogs is old and handicapped (part blind and/or deaf, if memory serves), so he relies on the other animals to help guide him along. They face danger from other animals (I believe the old dog gets in a fight with something fierce and wild. A badger? a bear? a wolverine? Whatever it was, it was SCARY!) Flooding in a river separates the cat from the dogs and I think the kitty gets washed downstream, with severe fear of drowning on the part of readers everywhere. It loses its hearing for a bit. Humans take it in and care for it for a while (including warming it in the oven, if memory serves?), but eventually the cat gets out and rejoins its companions. The pet owners and pet sitter are frantic, but when they return to the house because somebody forgot something (I think), they hear the dogs barking in the woods. Oh the joy of a family reunion!
What I liked about this book
1. Kitty! And puppies! We always had both growing up, and I liked that this story had both species, and showed them getting along.
2. Rooting for the underdogs: three domestic animals vs. the wilderness, the weather, time and distance is pretty high stakes.
3. Suspense! Would they live? Would they stay together? Would they find their way home? Would their family be there if they did?
4. Orphaned characters. Okay, not for real, but the animals didn't know that. They thought they'd been abandoned.
5. Adventure! Travel, fighting, wilderness survival and more. I may have mentioned this before, but I always liked the idea of living in the wilderness. I'd have sucked at it, but I thought it was something I'd want to try when I was a kid.
As those of you who've read my little "book reports" on Jane-Emily, The Borrowers, Little Men, Swiss Family Robinson, Charlotte's Web, Lord of the Rings and Socks will readily see, each of the five things above has been raised before. The Incredible Journey probably had the most in common with The Swiss Family Robinson, if only because you had a small group surviving on their own in the wilderness in a story driven by adventure and suspense. But there's overlap with at least some of the things I liked in the other stories as well.