CATechisms

by John Delaney

84 pages, Paperback

Published October 7, 2025

Reviews

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

If this were about any other topic, I'd call it a pet project; since that's a little too on-the-nose, let's call it a true vanity publication. From the author's lit of previous publications, plus his previous career path, I would have expected a better quality of writing. Unfortunately, the author tends toward the easy or obvious word choice more often than not-- the result is something you could get out of a stochastic extruder. There could certainly be worthwhile art from examining the truly everyday and mundane, but an uninspired recounting of the author's morning routing ("Prepping for the Cat," p. 25) or the cat's breakfast routine ("Breakfast / Chez Cat", p. 29) lack depth. Watching the cat watch TV ("Watching Cat TV," p. 57) could have a funny meta quality, for example; the coincidence of both pet and human taking the same medication (amlodipine) ("Prescriptions," p. 43) could have been poignant, with a little more care. But the author sacrifices good sense-making in order to keep to meter and/or rhyme (like using "teamwork" as a verb (p. 49), among plenty of other examples), relying on vibes when a little more care and attention could have met the needs of both the poem's structure and the precise feeling to be conveyed.

A couple of comparisons are given between the cat's fastidiousness and cleaning, comparing them to rather derogatory summations of "women, constantly fussing with their hair" (p. 55) and other examples. I'm keeping a less-than-kind but probably accurate assumption to myself here.

This is fine as a cheap add-on gift for your favorite pet lover, but not substantial enough to be a gift by itself. Not a recommended purchase for public libraries.

Program topics: not currently recommended for programming

Discussion prompts: not currently recommended for book discussion groups

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

We are a cat family, and because most cats act similarly, it was easy enough to picture any of our several cats in the poems or pictures that make up this book. The title is interesting, considering I'm only familiar with the church word "Catechism," but that one word can be overlooked. Of course, my daughter, who is a cat-lover, loved the book, and having studied a section on poems at school already, she noticed various types of poems in the book.