Lois Simmie opens her sequel to the popular Mister Got to Go with an allusion to Ludwig Bemelmans’ Madeline books: “In an old hotel covered with vines….” Unfortunately, this inspires the reader to make unfavourable comparisons between the uneven illustrations here and the evocative paintings that made Bemelmans famous. The simple text, however, is charming.

Got to Go, the cat that won’t leave the cozy Sylvia Hotel, is affronted when the manager, Mr. Foster, brings home a yappy terrier, Arnie. Arnie drives everyone crazy until Foster, enduring canine-induced headaches, calls his glamorous French friend. Madame La Tour arrives with Fifi, a female terrier who tames Arnie’s wild heart. Madame then adopts the smitten pup and whisks the two dogs off, restoring peace.

The illustrator, Cynthia Nugent, creates very expressive cats and dogs, but her humans have disproportionately large heads and are uniformly cursed with bulbous features. Strangely, these cartoony aliens inhabit perfectly reasonable spaces. Nugent also succumbs to the cutesy depiction of Fifi surrounded by bubble-gum pink hearts.

Simmie convincingly relates the story from Got to Go’s point of view, and the humour derives from her play with feline stereotypes. Got to Go has a lordly contempt for all dogs, especially Arnie. He derides their “barking their fool heads off” at the beach and marvels at their endless capacity for chasing sticks in the rain. When Arnie arrives, Got to Go exhibits typical cat pride, slinking off to the furnace room “where it was dark and gloomy,” then emerging at Foster’s cajoling only because “he was tired of it anyway.” Got to Go’s jealousy when attention is transferred to Arnie will speak volumes to children who have recently acquired siblings, even if they don’t make the connection between barking puppies and crying infants.