It's perfect. One of my favorites. ( )

Tired of waiting around for his neglectful family to feed him, Tibs the cat eventually feeds himself one day, much to the astonishment of his humans. Given more and more responsibility as a result, Tibs eventually ends up with a job and plenty of adult stress. The neighborhood cats watch it all in bemusement, and finally agree that Tibs is a 'clever cat' when he goes back to waiting on his humans to do things for him...

I enjoyed the exploration of the idea of cleverness here - how Tibs was called clever by the humans for knowing how to do human things, while his fellow cats clearly thought otherwise, believing that cleverness lay in allowing the humans to do all the work. That said, I really did not like Tibs' human family in Clever Cat, with their constant nastiness. The way they made him wait a LONG time for everything, the way they called him names like "stupid," their generally dismissive and unloving attitude - it all rubbed me the wrong way, and greatly decreased my reading pleasure. The artwork here was lovely - it was a surprise that the book wasn't wordless, like the two other titles from Peter Collington (On Christmas Eve and The Tooth Fairy) that I have read - but I still finished it with a bad taste in my mouth. I ended up giving this three stars for the artwork and the story idea, but it could easily have been two, given how mean-spirited the treatment of poor Tibs was. ( )

I love how this book plays with the meaning of the word clever. At first we think TIbbs is a clever cat because he can do all sorts of things that humans do. After awhile though he realizes that doing all these human things comes with a cost, he must work to make money and becomes very busy while the other cats just lay around all day. He then figures out that the cleverest thing to do is to just be a normal cat and let his human owners take care of him. This is a very amusing book and could also make children think about responsibility and work.