In Search of Cleo: How I Found My Pussy and Lost My Mind

Actress Gershon’s search for her missing cat, Cleo (lost because of her “hippy-dippy” assistant’s mistake), is the subject of this spunky if half-baked memoir. The book combines Gershon’s wacky efforts to find Cleo with scenes from her love life, and in both arenas, the actress marches to the beat of her own drum. To find her cat, she wakes up every day at 4:30 a.m., arms herself with “a can of tuna and a knife” and drives to West Hollywood to “yodel” a chant designed to lure Cleo home. She listens to the counsel of friends, an animal psychic named Sonia highly recommended by Ellen DeGeneres, and an enterprising man who calls her from jail volunteering to help after his release. Gershon peppers the cat-filled pages with other odd experiences. As a seven-year-old, she is harassed from a car by a naked, aroused man, and while in Hong Kong she has a one-night stand with a man she knows “without a doubt” is her husband from a past life. Gershon is a vigorous narrator and shares her most off-the-cuff thoughts (about Cleo, for example, she notes that “his meow is very gay”). While the hijinks are entertaining, the book as a whole never quite coalesces; the effort more closely resembles a moderately successful standup comedy routine. Agent: David Kuhn, Kuhn Projects. (Oct.)