reading « Capybara Madness

I Can Explain Everything Too

Interesting reading!

A Skipper Rous Post:

I just finished reading the new best seller, I Can Explain Everything: Confessions of a Pet Capybara, by Dobby Winnick. To say this book is interesting is to say the moon is made out of green cheese! I mean, duh! I may be a little prejudiced because, well, you know, Dobby is so cute he almost makes me faint. But even so, I can tell you this is the best book ever written by a capybara! I mean THE BEST!

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Rodent Reader (Quarterly)

Gari, the Rodent Reader

Guess what? I’m in a magazine! It’s called the Rodent Reader Quarterly and it’s all about rodents!

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Reading is Dangerous

Or the sad tale of Sheba the Pundit.

I think we all know that reading is a dangerous pastime. It can expand your mind and expose you to ideas that you never would have thought of by yourself. It can make you sympathetic to animals (and people) for whom you would otherwise not have the least bit of sympathy. It can teach you things that cause you to behave differently from those around you, to question the local ways, to think for yourself. All very, very dangerous things. Who was it who said that the pen is mightier than the sword?

But I never thought my book would be dangerous! Yes, it does teach you about capybaras. And (if you are not a cat yourself), it gives you insight into the way cats view the world. But these are not earth-shattering things. Just topics for idle conversation at the next #pawpawty, you know, “Don’t you think @Pandafur is so like Celeste in the book?”

Sadly, Celeste and the Giant Hamster seems to be just as dangerous as any other book. I’m just recounting this story as a warning to the rest of you.

You may remember this adorable photo of my good friend Sheba the Pundit reading Celeste on a windowsill.

Sheba the Pundit reading Celeste and the Giant Hamster

This is an excellent reading location because of the wonderful light. But Sheba, being the cat she is, thought she could go one better with this perch.

Sheba the Pundit falls asleep while reading Celeste

This is fine when a cat is awake and alert but, sorry to say, Sheba does not have a great attention span (she is a cat after all) and she fell asleep. (Do not take this to mean my book is boring! Far from it. It’s just how cats are.)

Can you see how far down it is? Believe it or don’t, Sheba fell! She used up a couple of her nine lives. I believe she is down to five now but most cats use up their extra lives when they are young like Sheba, so it’s not something to be especially worried about.

At any rate, she hurt her back leg pretty seriously and required a vet visit, bandages and confinement (I think this makes her more like Ruby than like Celeste). Here’s a photo of her in her sick bed.

Sheba the Pundit on her sick bed

Her owner, Michelle Holman, says she is doing well. She is hand fed every 2-3 hours, which I’m sure she loves. She is on a human pain killer, which she probably also loves. It will take her a few weeks to recover and until then she will have to be confined, which she will not love.

You can leave a note for Sheba and her owner as a comment to this blog. I’m sure she’d like to hear about other injuries suffered while reading.

Reading Rodent

Me reading Celeste & the Giant Hamster

You can’t believe the tension at my house this past week. My owner’s book, Celeste and the Giant Hamster, is out on amazon.com and people and animals are starting to read it. Since the capybara in the book isn’t really me, I didn’t think I would care much but I’ve gotten all wrapped up in the excitement too!

The first person we heard from who got the book was @alansmitheejp all the way in Japan! International audience right from the start! Then we got a photo of @WinstonPig, a very handsome tri-colored guinea pig, reading Celeste. Let me tell you, I stared at that photo for some time, thinking and pondering, pondering and thinking. A guinea pig reading is incredibly cute, no doubt about it. Could anything be cuter? That was a question I planned on answering.

Winston Pig reading Celeste & the Giant Hamster

I put on my reading glasses, spread the book before me and lay down in my favorite spot on the window seat. (The light is very good there for reading, by the way. I always think sunlight is the best but it has to be indirect and not too glaringly bright.) Then I started eeping. Eeping loudly. Finally my owner came in, saw my adorableness and grabbed her camera. (She can hardly stop herself from photographing me no matter what I do.)

When Neptune, Hello Pineapple and Sambal, who are all great friends of mine and my owner’s daughter’s guinea pigs, saw my photo and Winston’s, they wanted to test their own cuteness. They each had their picture taken with the book. They seemed to be taking turns. I guess they share better than I do.

Neptune

So now I can hardly wait for people and animals to send their pictures reading the book. Probably use the book cover or a page with a drawing is best, especially if the drawing is of the capybara or the capy-kittens. The cat drawings are okay but obviously you could see a cat drawing in a lot of books. Wouldn’t it be cool to have bunch of photos!

Hello Pineapple

Oh, my owner posted all the photos on amazon too. There is a place to upload “customer images.” Never noticed that before and not sure anyone else has either. But if you send me your photos I will put them up there too…course, you could do that yourself but if you’re as lazy as a capybara, you won’t.