Annabelle & Thatch: Cat Tales from West 82nd Street

by Larry Moore, Jeremy Clayton (Illustrator)

Larry Moore, a grumpy, semi-retired musical arranger, record producer, and theatre historian, considered himself an old coot with one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel. After being talked into adopting a cat to keep him company, he found himself the father of not one but two rambunctious Annabelle, a narcissistic beauty who envisions herself as a future Broadway star; and her sensible little brother Thatch, who’s more than happy to just tag along. Living on New York’s Upper West Side, they picnic in Central Park, fight vampires and floods, chase down goblins and cockroaches, cope with UFOs and apartment ghosts, confront Death and an animal killer, write an original musical, and sing endless show tunes on the fire escape with their neighborly pigeons. Their adventures are quirky, whimsical, sometimes outrageous, sometimes sentimental, but always full of heart.

283 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 4, 2025

Reviews

[Sue Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book! It's whimsical and snarky and hard to describe because it doesn't easily fit into any particular genre. It may look like a book for children, but it's not. As the cover clearly states, it's for "adult readers" who still retain enough of their inner child to believe that cats can talk. The stories are about the agony and the ecstasy of being owned by rescue cats—Annabelle, an entitled diva with dreams of starring on Broadway and Thatch, a loyal and devoted little brother—are sometimes hilarious, sometimes poignant, and always entertaining.

In the interest of full disclosure, Larry is my nearest and dearest cousin. (He was the first of 18 grandchildren. I came in as number 7.) Does that make me biased? Maybe. Even if it were written by a total stranger, I would still love the stories in this book along with the illustrations by Jeremy Clayton to whom I am not related. ;-)

[Sue Harsevoort · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. It made me laugh and cry. It made me wish my cats could talk to me, maybe.