Bad Kitty Gets a Bath

A humorous and only partly facetious how-to manual for giving a cat a bath. Yet more proof that dogs are the way to go when it comes to pets.

It’s a blustery Sunday, and rather than subject myself to another day stuck inside with my hurricane of a seven year-old, I took him to the bookstore. He’s at that age where even though he reads a few grades ahead of his class, he still likes pictures with his text. The title of Nick Bruel’s book ‘Bad Kitty Gets a Bath,’ immediately attracted him. We have a dog and a cat, neither of whom are particularly well-behaved. My son gets into his share of trouble too, so he gets a perverse pleasure out of seeing our pets (his ‘siblings’) get busted. On Bad Kitty’s back cover is a cute cartoon drawing of a cat, followed by a plus sign, a dripping water faucet, an equal sign, and a nuclear mushroom cloud. Although my son has never show more been witness to our cat being bathed (we spared him the trauma), the implication was that the bad kitty in question was about to be treated to some kind of punishment. Pet, plus punishment, equaled my son’s interest, so he opened the book and began laughing like a loon two pages in.

He continued reading Bad Kitty in the truck on the way home, and finished it over the next hour while crammed in next to me (and my laptop) in the La-Z-Boy. Being settled with his mommy in the chair, despite closer and closer quarters the older he gets (ha, and as middle-age spread settles onto me), is his favorite place to be. Whether he’s playing his Nintendo DS (“Mom! Help me kill this guy!”) or watching cartoons (“Mom! Did you see that?”) or reading (“Mom! Listen to this!”), you can imagine I don’t get a lot of writing done. I’m under constant bombardment of Mom!Mom!Mom! But the number of times he calls my attention to something is generally an accurate barometer of how much he’s enjoying it.

Bad Kitty may have set some kind of Mom! record. And despite my many entreaties that he do so silently, he insisted on reading the whole book out loud, including sound-effects. (Well, I had to help him on occasion there. I heard him reading, “Eff. Eff. Tee. Eff. Eff. Tee,” and when I looked to see what on earth he was doing, I saw he was reading the letters off instead of mimicking a kitty spitting in anger, “FFT! FFT!”)

You might not think there’s enough material on the subject of giving a cat a bath to write an entire book. You’d be wrong. Author and illustrator Bruel does a fine, funny job stretching it out. First he demonstrates how kitty normally bathes herself. Then we’re treated to several hysterical panels of kitty hacking up a fur ball (this is the part that hooked my son, and me, to be honest). Then kitty gets chased by doggy and gets filthy, followed by a surprising number of pages dedicated to explaining to the reader how very, very, very, very, ad nauseum much cats hate baths. They really do. (No, really.)

The actual bath itself, where Bruel depicts kitty being subjected to the worst form of feline indignity and torture, with an instantaneous unequal and similar reaction, captures the event perfectly. (I make this assertion this from what I can recall of the experiences I’ve suffered through. Other than the visible scars, I’ve blanked the worst bits out of my mind—probably to protect my cat from unconscious retaliation—similar to forgetting the pain of childbirth so the species will survive).

When I told my son I wanted to write a review of the book for Booksquawk, he watched as I googled Nick Bruel. On the author’s website, we read that Bad Kitty had been awarded a 2009 GRYPHON HONOR for transitional reading by THE CENTER FOR CHILDREN'S BOOKS at the UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS. Of course my son had no idea what that meant, but he waved the book in my face and exclaimed, “Oh, my! This was awarded!”

Then he said, “Mom! Put down Bruel’s Bad Kitty Books,” which I took to mean he wanted me to jot down a note to purchase more of Bruel’s stories. So I did.

(Review originally posted to Booksquawk) show less

Our favorite Bad Kitty is cat behavior incarnate here, from hiding/disappearing to post-bath fluffball. She only consents to being bathed upon hearing that the puppy will suffer a bath also--an agony she imagines with vengeful delight. Of course, the dog bath turns out to be a quick, happy squirt with the hose, and we're left once again with ba-a-d kitty face....Dead-on, funny stuff.

This is a pretty cute, very short chapter book about giving a kitty a bath (lol). It follows the titular "bad kitty" from the previous Bad Kitty picture book - who, after discovering there was no cat food in the house, went on a rampage. This time the owner gives advice about why one might have to give a cat a bath, how to best go about doing that, how the cat will react, and so on. It's generously illustrated in a comicbook style with lots of "splat," "fft," and "meowr" sound effects.

It's very short, has a glossary for some of the unfamiliar words, and therefore would be a nice transitional book for early chapter book readers.

Bad Kitty Gets a Bathby Nick Bruel is a funny manual-esque book about - What else? - giving a cat a bath. Most of us who have or have had a cat knows the mortal danger of this proposition, and yet we still attempt such folly. As Bruel points out in this second book about Bad Kitty, there are times when it is necessary to baptize our feline family members for their health and our scented pleasure.

When these times occur, you must be prepared. Be aware you put your life in peril, risking the chance of suffering extreme blood loss and soiled underwear.

After using bribery, begging and reverse psychology in a failed attempt to get Kitty into the tub, tell Kitty that you’ll be giving the dog a long, icy cold bath AFTER her. Her desire to show more watch Puppy suffer may help her to overcome her hatred of baths.

Without being mean-spirited or cruel, Bruel slides in facts about cats, such as their tongues are covered in papillae made from the same material as finger nails and facts about other cat species, making Bad Kitty Gets a Bath both entertaining and educational. It’s humorous pictures and funny content hides the fact it is a chapter book… the dreaded CHAPTER BOOK… and Maggie happily read it through. Her favorite part being the picture of Puff-Ball Kitty after she was dried.

Any time an author can teach while delighting young readers, especially those who balk at the bigger books, then the book is a success. And few things are funnier than the whole concept of bathing a cat, an animal with 20 daggers on its feet as well as needles in its mouth and toxic saliva that abhors the very mention of submersion and will shred you for thinking it let alone trying it.

I give Bad Kitty Gets a Bath by Nick Bruel 4 out of 5 stars. You don’t have to be a child to enjoy it, either. I’ve had it on my wishlist since it came out last year. Maggie told me that the book fair her school’s having this week was selling it, so I sent her with money this morning and read it (out loud to the kids, lest I look silly) immediately :-)

click for full review: http://thekoolaidmom.wordpress.com/2009/04/08/bad-kitty-gets-a-bath-by-nick-brue... show less

Bad Kitty Gets a Bath is an early chapter book which follows the struggle of making Kitty take a bath. Throughout the book, there are many strategies of trying to convince and get Kitty to get itself all cleaned up. However, its cleverness and own wit only postpone the entire process. The book reads more as a how to for getting Kitty, or any cat for that matter, to bathe. It is a playful read and I feel, really allows children to appropriately engage in witty content and think in more "mature" ways of humorously viewing the world.
Something which I greatly appreciated about this book by Nick Bruel is the use of asterisks. Behind certain words or phrases, an asterisk would be placed which would refer the reader to the back of the book show more which had an individualized glossary of terms. This is where the phrase or word would be further explained and show how its usage was intended and how to be interpreted. I think that this is a creative tool for young readers because it shows how language has many meanings and is not something that necessarily is binary. show less

So, I got this book in a box set at Costco and, being a cat lover, I couldn't not buy this! Naturally, as it's meant for small children, this book was easy and a bit too tame for me, but for what it is meant to be, it's worth reading. It's very cute and as a cat owner, I can 100% agree with how hard it is to bathe cats lol

A very cute read and buying if you have little ones.

My favorite line from this book is from the quiz: "If you answered anything else, please reread chapter one 753 more times or until you are saying 'cats hate baths' out loud in your sleep. If you answered D, please go immediately to an eye doctor, because the animal in your home that you think is a cat is really a chicken."

Pure gold.