The Cat Who Covered the World

Over 17 years and tens of thousands of miles, Henrietta the cat became a plucky companion to foreign correspondent Christopher S. Wren. This is his hilarious and poignant account of their adventures over four continents, and also the tale of an American family coping with chaos in faraway places with the help of their resourceful cat. Photos.

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Henrietta was an ordinary New York City cat until she ventured overseas with foreign correspondent Christopher S. Wren and his wife and 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 crisscrossing 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 Nobel laureate Andrei Sakharov, disrupted a diplomatic dinner to present a mouse to the guest of honor, and fended off Rasputin -- her tomcat nemesis. Lost for weeks in Egypt, Henrietta lived wild 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 checkup from the People's Liberation Army, sampled ginger and coriander, feasted on "huangyu" (a delicacy normally reserved for official banquets), and curled up with the writings of Chairman Mao Zedong. While she lived in Canada, she learned to plough through snowdrifts like a sled dog. During her twilight years in South Africa, Henrietta jousted with exotic birds, danced to a township beat, and fought back against apartheid's guard dogs. Add to this mix Henrietta's visits to Paris, Rome, Lisbon, and Tokyo, explorations of airport terminals, and confrontations with customsinspectors, and the result is a charming tale about a spunky, curious pet who earned the right to be ranked among the world's most widely traveled cats.