City Cat Country Cat Author:Patricia Cleveland-Peck, Gilly Marklew (Illustrator) Meet two cats. Charlie, the city cat, plays indoors and likes to cuddle; Freckle, the country cat, drinks fresh milk from the farm cows. Each is highly independent and often away from home for days at a time. The tale moves back and forth between the settings, pointing out similarities and differences in the cats' lives. Although there is co... more »nsistency to this patterning, the break up of the text and the layout of the illustrations defy symmetry. Attractive watercolors are soft and warm in some scenes, darker and more deeply defined in others. No visual clues are given as to the punch line. Only when Charlie's owner follows him to the country is the thoroughly unexpected truth discovered; Charlie and Freckle are the same cat. A climactic next-to-last painting captures the cat's look; he's totally nonplussed by the confrontation with both his of owners, who agree to share the cat and to continue to let him come and go as he pleases. --Martha Topol, Northwestern Michigan College« less