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Exclusive Hound behind Dog Person, the hot book of LBF18, speaks out on cat controversy
As Kristen Roupenian’s début short-story collection Cat Person continues to sell around the world, Dodger, with the assistance of owner Roger Tagholm, reveals why his own memoir is a more illuminating proposition for publishers
Well, honestly, the title should have been warning enough. You knew Kristen Roupenian’s now famous New Yorker story—which has led to deals in 23 territories, including with Cape in the UK and Simon & Schuster in the US for sums that will keep Roupenian’s cats (if she has any) in Whiskas for the next decade and then some—was going to end badly with a title like that. “Cat Person”. Ugh. It sends shivers down the spine. Now, if it had been called “Dog
Dodger was left angry and disappointed by publishers’ fawning over the ‘inferior’ Cat Person, and is considering legal action
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Person”, it would have been a whole different kettle of—well, better not use that description or else we’ll have every cat in the neighbourhood pawing at the door, meowing so authentically (ha! I’m not fooled—such fakers!), until some imbecile weakens. You know what they’re like when food’s about: feed them once and they’re your best friend, until they get fed at another house, and then they’re off. So it goes in their despicably selfish world. How does Paul Young put it on Smooth? “Wherever I lift
my catflap, that’s my home.” Oh no, in “Dog Person” everything
would be very different. For a start, the heroine Margot would have been treated with great gentleness and respect, though she would have been expected to do her bit when it came to picking up poo—albeit with full instruc- tions issued regarding inside-out double-bagging. Without doubt it would have ended wonderfully, too. Almost certainly with marriage, two lovely children and, well, yes, a Labrador by a crackling log fire. Disney would have bought the rights, Owen Wilson and Kristen Scott Thomas would have been all lined up, and the novelisation would have been given away free with bags of kibble at Pets at Home.
That’s not all. Something else would
have been different too, something that’s a little difficult to talk about. When it comes to the after-hours shenanigans, as it were, which take place following the cinema date in the story, a dog person would never “collapse on her like a tree falling”, as Roupenian puts it. You know why. In the canine world, trees are sacred, belong- ing to the same generis as lampposts, railings and occasionally welly-wearers chatting in the park whose legs must be anointed in some similar urine-based
manner. Trees, and other such vertical conveniences, must be treated with respect, in words and in life. But when push comes to shove, a decision has to be made about who to favour. It’s easy. Forget all those inter- national deals. Let us summarise. A dog will bring you a stick or a shoe, as if to say: “Here, please find wood for the fire so that you may heat your home—and look, I have brought you a covering for your feet too, the object that you refer to by the sound ‘shoe’.” What will a cat do? If it can be bothered, and if it isn’t halfway across the neighbourhood, it might bring you a dying mouse, whose corpse shudders its final death throes on your kitchen floor, possibly leaving a slight offering of innards in the process. I rest my case. Which is why, to save upset, Roupe- nian has apparently decided to bring them both together in a new story in which they join forces to defeat a common enemy. “Squirrel Attack” is already the subject of an intense bidding war here at the fair.
12th April 2018
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