The cat who covered the world - Christopher S. Wren

Henrietta was just a city cat until she ventured overseas with New York Times foreign correspondent Chistopher S. Wren, his wife and two children. Over seventeen years and tens of thousands of miles she became a plucky, indispensable companion for the reporter as he covered world events in Moscow, Cairo, Beijing, Ottawa and Johannesburg. Wren's often hilarious, and sometimes poignant account of an American family's adventures criss-crossing the globe shows them coping with chaos in faraway places - always with the help of their ever-resourceful cat. In Russia, Henrietta cadged fish and cabbage at Moscow's Central Market, acquired a taste for caviar, befriended Novel laureate Andrei Sakharov, disrupted a diplomatic dinner to present a mouse to the guest of honour, and fended off Rasputin - her tomcat nemesis. Lost for weeks in Egypt, Henrietta survived on the unforgiving streets of Cairo, vied with Nile River rats for food scraps, and miraculously found her way back to her distraught family not long after they had given her up for dead. When the Wren family moved to China, Henrietta received a medical check-up from the People's Liberation Army, sampled ginger and coriander, feasted weekly on huangyu (a delicacy normally reserved for official banquets), and curled up with the writings of Chairman Mao. During her twilight years in South Africa, she jousted with exotic birds, danced to a township beat, and fought back against apartheid's guard dogs. Add to this mix Henrietta's explorations of airport terminals and confrontations with customs inspectors, and the result is a charming tale about a spunky, curious pet who earned the right to be ranked among the world's most wide travelled felines.