Nisbo: My Husband's Feline First Wife

Sometimes it is nice to have the chance to write about other stuff than books and author Ellen Whyte gave me the space to guest-blog a post about one of my cats. Find it here.

Au Reveals All!

Au, hero of Katz Tales, speaks. As Au’s language is too sophisticated for some audiences, he allows his personal servant Ellen Whyte to write the columns and the book in her own way.

However, as a rare treat, Au types his own message for Bibliobuli :

Helo reederz. i dont do intervoows ewesualy but as Sharon sends homidge often i haf graceeousli agreed to tak two yoo. And too tipe it myself. There is no need to fank me; just send a rost chikkin.

Sharon aksed me to shair my eksperiences as a faymus kat. Wel, what kan i say? i have always been a top kat so i am used to kontinual adorasyun.

Anyone hoo nos me, howevver, wil tel yoo i am a verry low-key kat. i have just too devoted servants, wun male and wun feemale. They make shure the big grey boks in the kitshun is stakked with treets and the kat biscuit barrel is all ways ful. Wen they perform reely wel i alow them to squizle my chin or play a game. Sum strikter kats wud say i spoil them but what kan i say, i am a just a verry kind kat by nature.

Wen the feemale began witing abowt me, i wuz in two mines.

On the wun paw i pweffer to keep a low pwofile becuz it makes it eazier to katch mice. Also, i don like peeple fawning al over me. i no my beauyooti, wit and grasiousness ar a magnet for the rabble, but al that hommage kan git verry tiring verry quikly.

However, the feemale promissed me that her storees wud enshoor a perminent flow of treetz. She also promissed i wud have to make no pershunal apearanses. Plus, she pointed owt that not evriwun nos what it is like to live with sumone as wunderfool as me. This final point perswayded me.

What the feemale had not mensioned wur the foto shoots.

I wuz verry patient wen she tuk my purrtrait for the buk cuvur but i objekt to those kandid pitshures she splashes al over the place withowt eeven asking my permizion. i meen, how wud yoo feel if sumone fotograffed yoo sleepin and eksposed yoor prozpiroos tummy to the nasion? i am not a poleetiseeyon!

But the feemale has been verry good abowt keeping my fans away. Wen they visit i luk at dem and deeside if they ar worthy of an audienze. Okkasionaly, if their hands ar kleen and they ar properli respektful, i wil alow them to stroke me. i beleef wun must enkorage wuns infeerreeors in everry way, eeven if it meenz sum pershunal sakrifice.

Allso, she has kept me properli suplied with treetz. Wich reminds me: i havent had wun in abowt 20 minootes. Before i go and poot in my order, i wud like to say wun thing: buy the buk! Not only is it filed with wunnerful stories al abowt me but 10% of the feemale’s share wil go to help owt kitties hoo ar living withowt the benefit of pershunal servants.

Bye now. I haf too eet a treet.

Katz Tales, Living Under The Velvet Paw is out in bookshops now. Price RM28 ISBN: 978-967-3035-64-9. For a free sneak peak and free sample story, visit http://www.lepak.com/katztalesbook.html

Two Books for Ellen

One of our featured authors at Readings@Seksan last Saturday has not just one but two titles newly released - both of them with different publishers, and both of them blurbed by me! (Professional!) Ellen Whyte is someone I wanted very much to meet when I read her Katz Tales columns in The Star and realised that she was as feline crazy as me. And anyone doing PR on behalf of our furry friends, in a country where pets are too often neglected and abandoned, can only be a good thing. I'm really delighted that she now has out Katz Tales : Under the Velvet Paw (anyone who has been owned by a cat will really appreciate the title!) To quote myself on the back cover :

Ellen Whyte has the uncanny ability to think herself into the mind of a cat, and writes with great charm while managing to imparting a great deal of practical information. Scoop, Au and Target deserve to be Malaysia's first feline superstars.

I think my words may have gone to Au's head, as you will see later. The second book Ellen has out is a compilation of her Logomania columns for The Star's Mind Our English page. Logomania : Where Common Phrases Come From and How to Use Them is published by MPH. And to ahem - quote myself again :

Logomania is a fascinating and very enjoyable exploration of some of the quirkier phrases in the English language and of the historical circumstances and cultural practices that gave rise to them. Ellen Whyte also provides plenty of examples of the expressions in use so you can comfortably slip these new expressions into everyday conversation.

I have learned a lot about my own language that I didn't know before, and remain fascinated about how the words we use are actually artefacts. Check out some more of her very readable columns here and here. Her blog is also a very enjoyable read, and she put up a very useful piece after the publishing symposium we attended in Singapore last week on how to put stuff online without giving your content away. (A problem we are both concerned about.) Now then, just because I feel naughty, thought I'd put up a pic I took of Ellen and a blow-up doll in Singapore last week. Ellen is the one on the left.

Readings at a New Seksan's

Our Saturday's Readings@Seksan was quite a different event because of the location - Seksan's beautiful new place 48, Jalan Tenggirri - part personal gallery, part guesthouse ... and completed only the day before, so our event was its christening.

Seksan's spaces are magical, and all the more so for their apparent simplicity and use of recycled and salvaged materials. We were gawping at the distressed wooden doors (from an old school building?), the bare brickwork, the lampshade made of cat food tins (and the others of yoghurt bottles and plastic cake trays), the landscaping with wild plants, and marvelling at how relaxed and happy and creative the place makes you feel.

The guesthouse will be open soon for bookings, and I reckon it would be a perfect place for a writing retreat.

I was a bit worried about our audience finding us, but we really did have a bumper crowd on Saturday. If I had any problem at all it was in trying to decide how we should use the space around the pool - terraces, patios and dining area. Which way should we face, where should the audience be? There was sun and rain to factor in too, because we got extremes of both that afternoon. I'm not sure I got it right.

Anyway, here are the stars of the afternoon :

Seksan himself requested that Tan May Lee read first, because he so wanted to hear the story about the Muslim lesbian women. The piece which appears in the Body2Body collection is sizzling hot and beautifully written and she read a very moving passage from it.

May Lee, incidentally, works for MPH and is the editor of Quill magazine, and she was kind enough to bring along some free copies for us.


Ellen Whyte read us an extract from her new book Katz Tales : Living Under the Velvet Paw - a great story which very nicely illustrates the duplicitous ways of cats. I think all cat lovers in the audience could really relate to it. (More about Ellen coming up in another post!)


I've blogged about Haslina Usman's mission to make sure that the works of her late father, former laureate Usman Awang, are not forgotten and I was so happy to have her at Readings. she roped me into reading the English version of a poem of his very powerful poem (Bunga Popi) about poppies :

From blood, from pus that
rots in the soil
from skeletons that have lost
their lives
the result of war maniacs
who kill love,
the red flowers bloom beautifully,
requesting to be adored.

(More about the poem here.) I also read an extract from the very dramatic last chapter of Scattered Bones (the English translation of Tulang2 Berserahkan) while Haslina read a piece from Turunnya Sebuah Bendera (The Flag Comes Down?).

Next year Haslina is organising a restaging of her father's classic play Uda dan Dara (described as the Malay Romeo and Juliet) and I hope to invite her back then.

This young lady is Afi Momo - a science student by day and a poet every other minute. She made her debut at the 4th KL Poetry Slam and has performed in various events around KL and also in Singapore at the Lit Up Festival. She has published her own chapbook Paper Raper, and read us five poems from it. my favourite was entitled how to be A Pair of High Heels.

Her friends came along to support her and to pass out some copies of a group poetry zine. I was most impressed by their work and plan to invite the other members of Kata.Mata to appear next month.


Here's children's author Rebecca Loke with her son Ethan, who inspired her new book Great-Grandma's Hair Loss Remedy. Ethan read for his mum and was quite superb. (And hair or no hair, I reckon this young man is going to be breaking some hearts before long!)


Julya Oui is a freelance scriptwriter who also writes short stories, novels and poetry. she's been publsihed in various anthologies and magazines, and has a short horror story collection out soon. She also blogs here.

She read us a short horror story and the weather decided to provide the sound effects, giving us peels of thunder and flashes of lightning to accompany the words. (This of course gave new meaning to the expression, flash fiction!).

She also read us a piece from her story Friends Of Everyone which is in the Body2Body collection.

Finally, Moja Amin and Izza Izelan (both education students at University Teknologi MARA) took to the mic to give us a taste of a play that the group they belong to (Ethos! Society) have in production. It was a short dialogue debating the nature of love.

You can read more about the play here, and I was quite amazed to discover that one of my beautiful nieces, Wan Nadrah Yusoff, plays one of the leads. Small world. (And I have no excuse not to go to see it now!)

Before and after the event and during the break there was a lot of selling going on - we had a veritable arty pasar malam.

Yvonne Foong had recruited a whole team of young friends to help her sell tee-shirts, Steven V-L Lee's beautiful photographic books which he had donated, tee -shirts, her own book, and cupcakes. All to raise funds for the operation to save her sight.

Umapagan Ampikaipakan donated a whole pile of new books that people could help themselves to for free.

Thanks a lot to everyone who came and everyone who read. Biggest thanks too to Seksan for letting us launch the wonderful space. Thanks to Haslina for baking us a very special kueh lapis! Thanks too to Saras for helping to clear up. And again to Shahril Nizam for the blog poster.

I thank Tommy Ng for all the photos above except for the one of Haslina and myself which I stole from Azwan's Facebook page. (Do check out the rest here.) There are more lovely photos of the event showing more of the audience and the venue on on Leon Wing's and Yvonne's Foong's Facebook pages too.