h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Infinity Plus One Cats - A1361341
Author: Blackberry Cat, FMA, Off to Galway City for the Arts Festivel soon. - U516189

OK, this, my 2nd entry to Peer Review is a long abandoned piece by someone who hasn't posted in years. All I've done is tried to edit it to comply with the writing guidelines whilst keeping the essential humour of CatCarousers original piece. I hope you'll feel I've succeeded.

This is a good entry, although I'm not sure that it complies with the guidelines on suitable content for the Edited Guide. A factual entry along the lines of 'How to Introduced a New Cat to a Household' that contained clearly presented, realistic imformation would certainly be appropriate, but at the moment I don't this entry is.

With work, I think it would be possible to bring get it into the Edited Guide. Possible suggestions:

- Try to make it come from a more neutral perspective, rather from that of a cat. For example, the sentence: "Our human researchers have learned..." would need to be changed to: "Human researchers have learned..."
- "Here's the preferred Guide method..." - is this is a genuine, widely approved method? If it's just a personal theory, then I'm afraid that isn't really suitable for the EG. There's no reason why you can't do some research on the internet about house training cats and then write that up in a similar humorous style.
- Consider changing the title to one that gives a closer indication of the content of the entry.
- Perhaps format the entry into GuideML, h2g2's markup language. See the <./>GuideML-Clinic</.> to learn how to do this.

Websites of possible benefit for research:
- http://www.wonderpuppy.net/canwehelp/housebreakC.htm
- http://www.petalia.com.au/Templates/StoryTemplate_Process.cfm?specie=Cats&story_no=182
- http://www.petalia.com.au/Templates/StoryTemplate_Process.cfm?specie=Cats&story_no=135
- http://www.cfainc.org/caring.html

This entry has considerable merit as it is, even if it currently isn't suitable for the Edited Guide. People often get too wound up about the Edited Guide, and forget about all the other cool stuff on h2g2. If you feel that the suggestions that I've made would completely destroy the soul of this excellent entry, then considered putting it into the Alternative Writing Workshop (<./>Writing-Alternative</.&gt, submitting it to the h2g2 Post (<./>ThePost</.&gt or finding out about the <./>underguide</.>.

Thanks for the kind advice. I'll have to think a little and maybe do some research when I'm next off work.

I did change the piece to pretty basic Guide ML and eliminated 1st person references.

I didn't want to change the original text of CatCarousers piece too much as I liked the style he'd written it in and couldn't write something as humerous myself.

You could be right that I may be better off submitting it to the AWW.

Wow! Tough choice!

We too had a cat that could open doors. She could also open windows. Too smart for her own good though. She eventually escaped one day and went underneath a car, or so we think.

This is one of those entries that would be appropriate anywhere in the guide . I liked it - the humour is great, and however this particular one turns out, a version for the Edited Guide could easily be produced from this I think.

So, looking purely at the Edited Guide, maybe the following ideas might be useful.

Maybe you could change the name to "How to introduce an additional cat into a household" or something. My title stinks here!

Also, maybe you could look at removing some of the "this researcher", "our research team", "Willow" references. They are a bit personal, which might cause some problems.

Other than that it really does all fit together. Its factual with a lot of unforced humour, it's well researched, its quite objective. Its both factual *and* creative. I'm sure if you check the Writing Guidelines you are not too far off the mark. Hmmm. Interested in hearing what others have to say.

It gets my vote!

Woodpigeon

Yes, definitely not an Entry to give up on.

I have a cat who's a maine coon. I read maine coon's are supposed to display a very doglike personality, and from what I know about dogs I suppose he does. There's no running into doors or anything, it's like he's taken the good parts from both animals and combined them. On top of that, he was raised for his first year or so of life in the forest until we 'rescued' him. So he's had about the most intelligence stimulating genes and environment you can give a cat. He's trained my parents to give him whatever he wants by learning to chew paper. Yes, that's right. He doesn't eat it or anything, he uses his paws to hold down any paper in the vicinity while he just rips it up with his teeth. Luckily, money is not made of paper as everyone seems to think it is. It's cotten and something else I think I recall. But there are still bills and documents that my parents always seem to be surprised he'll chew even though he's been chewing paper for over 10 years now.

The day we got our second cat long after we had had our first, our first cried. Now cats are a creature that until very recently was living solely in the desert or quasi-desert environment so thye have a unique relationship woth water, and animals aren't generally able to cry anyway, even when they are in physical pain. Being a human, I don't usually appreciate the depths of abstract thinking that have to go into concepts like envy, but I'm almost positive that having the same reaction to a new family member being introduced into the household as a human child is eerily intelligent.

Thanks for the input
I think I'll try and rewrite it to fit into the guide. If it proves beyond me I can always submit CatCarousers original piece to AWW. Pity about the title, I like it

I've changed the title to "Adding a new cat to your household without tears"
I'm going to withdraw this entry, rewrite it and hopefully resubmit it soon.
Once again thanks for all the input

Good luck with the rewrite - I'll look forward to seeing it back in Peer Review

Don't forget that you don't have to withdraw it from the review forums completely, and that the Writing-Workshop can be a useful place to receive comments on not-quite-finished entries.

Thanks
I'll maybe put it there after 1st rewrite especially if not fully satisfied with it