Enough To Make A Cat Laugh

In 1990, with a bestselling book behind him, and spurred on by a marriage to the writer Aileen Armitage, Deric Longden took one of the most momentous decisions of his life and moved to a foreign country. Huddersfield, in Yorkshire, with its distinctive manners and customs and its wealth of remarkable characters, would surely provide him with all the material he needed for the book he was planning, one of the all-time classic of travel literature. But two years later, when he sat down to write it, somehow the major events of everyday life kept intruding: the demands of a houseful of cats, the need to get a gas cooker repaired, the problem of opening a milk carton, the memories stirred to a life by sorting through old clothes in the wardrobe.
Still, ‘I’m a Stranger Here Myself’ is a travel book of a kind, one in which there is no telling where the wandering mind might get to next, where the most hilarious adventures can happen between the kitchen and the bathroom, and where a morning’s shopping can provide enough anecdotes to last a lifetime. Once again Deric Longden demonstrates his genius for taking the most ordinary materials of life and transforming them with inspired but gentle humour.

Deric Longden had never thought of himself a cat lover, but from the moment he saw the tiny kitten sitting on an upturned bucket down in the garden he was hooked. Strictly speaking, the little cat belonged to the neighbours, but somehow when it began to rain it seemed only natural to bring him inside, and once there he slipped so easily into Deric’s and Aileen’s lives that there was an unspoken agreement that he had found his real home. Little did he know that he had entered the Longden world, in which ordinary life is always just a little out-of-the-ordinary.
Aileen being Aileen, it was probably inevitable that sooner or later the kitten would be trapped in the refrigerator for longer than was good for him.  And Deric being Deric, the obvious was to thaw him back to life was to make a little coat for him out of an old thermal vest. Thus the cat who came in from the cold got his name- ‘Thermal’ – and joined the wonderful cast of characters in the ongoing Longden saga.
‘The Cat Who Came in from the Cold’ combines Deric Longden’s unique style of gentle humour with al the comic solemnity and cuddly charm of an irresistible kitten.

50 amusing short stories for cat lovers by Emmy and BAFTA-winning author Deric Longden. Broadcaster and speaker, he has written many widely-acclaimed books The Cat Who Came in From the Cold, I’m a Stranger Here Myself, Enough to Make a Cat Laugh, A Play On Words and Paws In the Proceedings. Each demonstrate his unique blend of humour, observation and his fun and adventures with his various adoptive cats. Tailpieces is a special personal collection of his favourite short stories and articles on cats.

Diana’s Story, published in 1989, some years after his wife Diana's death, was a bestseller. The book hit the Sunday Times best seller list straight away and won the NCR book award. It was followed by Lost for Words. They were adapted for television, the first under the title Wide-Eyed and Legless, and an adaptation of Lost for Words. Both were nominated for multiple BAFTAs and Lost For Words, screened in January 1999 and repeated in 2012 after the death of Pete Postlethwaite, attracted an audience of more than 12 million viewers and won the Emmy for best foreign drama and a BAFTA for Thora Hird as best actress.