I & Claudius

Feeling bored with her job and intrigued by America, British journalist de Vries decided to take a road trip from Connecticut to California with her beloved 19-year-old cat, Claudius. Because of quarantine restrictions in the U.K. and her cat's advanced age, she knew that Claudius wouldn't be returning to British soil, so the trip became the pair's final adventure. Careening from Graceland to L.A., de Vries and the mellow Claudius hit almost every clich along the way--including a brush with voodoo in New Orleans and a scare over a Las Vegas gambling debt. While delightfully objective at first, de Vries devolves into something of a sideshow barker, describing only the most grotesque and bizarre characters she encountered. Her finer moments occur when she sheds her hyperactive, kooky tone and honestly recounts the emotional toll that slowly losing a pet can take. Unfortunately, those passages are all too infrequent. Instead, she includes ""dialogues"" with Claudius that are likely to prove too precious for even the most devoted cat lovers as well as long descriptions of her own banal activities, like getting her nails done and discussing breast enhancement with a plastic surgeon. As she frets over which highway to take and how to smuggle a cat into motels with ""no pets"" policies, Claudius's health declines, leading to painstaking chronicles of his frequent trips to strange vets. The impending loss of her beloved cat turns the frisky author serious at last, but too late to save her book. (Nov.)