This image is the cover for the book Letters from Cleo and Tyrone

Letters from Cleo and Tyrone

Tyrone: "Never - but never - come when your name is called. In fact, the moment you hear your name, compress your body into the size of an olive, become as still and invisible as a salesperson at Bloomingdale's, and go back to sleep."

Cleo: "...then my daddy got to the check-in desk and announced in a loud stentorian voice that his stupid cat was constipated. Hey, buddy, could you say it a little louder? I don't think the folks in Ames, Iowa, heard you."

From dreaming of catnip fields and tummy rubs to driving their mommies crazy, Cleo and Tyrone keep a busy schedule. But they take time out to correspond and share their thoughts - polemics really - about dogs, fashion, real estate, medical science, fine dining, cinema, poetry (haiku included), and the pitiful state of their owners' social lives.

More than treatises on the feline and human condition, this is also a love story. Cleo and Tyrone often dramatically - ok, melodramatically - compare themselves to Romeo and Juliet, blaming their evil owners for keeping them apart.

Cleo and Tyrone can each be vain, self-centered and manipulative, but somehow, in spite of all their scheming ways, they still manage to wrap their furry little paws around your heart and hold on for a lifetime.

L. Virginia Browne, Linda Hamner, Steve Feldman

Cleo came from humble beginnings, but has since established her fiefdom chez Hamner. Her days consist of eating plastic bags, tossing Mommy's collection of stuffed hedgehogs into the toilet, and writing to her beloved Tyrone.

Tyrone enjoys corn muffins, tacos, and chocolate milk, which he drinks by dipping his paw into questionably abandoned glasses and licking the purloined treat off. He is also fond of boxes and grocery bags, and holds the record for both toilet paper and paper towel shredding.

St. Martin’s Press