Steve Betchkal

Renowned Chippewa Valley birder Steve Betchkal has written a book about cats.

Say what?

Yup, it’s called Cat Tales. The 50-page book shares 18 of the hundreds of “man and cat” bedtime stories Betchkal would create on the fly and tell his then 3-year-old son Emerson and 7-year-old son Davyd before they went to sleep. He continued to tell these stories “for many nights, over many years” as they were growing up. At last count, he has written down 40 of them, so yes, a sequel – Cat Tales: Life Two – is in the works.

“The book is a challenge directed to the adult reading it to children: how to play the parts – both the man and the cat – and convince the child that all of it is happening, and all of it is real.” – Steve Betchkal, author, on Cat Tales

“The stories are intended to be read out loud to children,” shares Betchkal, “and every child I have told or read these stories to, has been captivated. The book is a challenge directed to the adult reading it to children: how to play the parts – both the man and the cat – and convince the child that all of it is happening, and all of it is real. This book reads well, because it was told well, first.”

Betchkal told the stories to his two children as they sat talking in the dark at bedtime: he in a rocking chair and they in a bunk bed. The book’s graphic design re-creates that mood with white printed letters on shiny black paper.

“At a certain point, my boys grew up, ditched the bunk bed, and no longer required bedtime stories,” Betchkal continues. “If my boys had remained children, I could have made up 1,001 cat stories (think the book, The Arabian Nights: One Thousand and One Nights), each as entertaining and creatively satisfying as the last. There is no shortage of good cat story material, and I am a born storyteller.”

This book is “meant to serve as an heirloom, an historical record of a family tradition preserved in print,” Betchkal says. And he hopes that parents everywhere as well as both of his sons will have a chance to read the book to their own children one day. Davyd, now 30, is a scientist in Alaska, and Emerson, now 26, works in an Eau Claire County group home.

While Betchkal admits that his favorite story is the one he is currently inventing, the stories in the book are based on actual events. “The cat really did climb the little palm tree at midnight, the cat really did come from a pig farm, and the cat really did sleep on top of my head,” he reveals.

Another unique feature of the book – images of famous portraits – ties into to another of Betchkal’s passions. As an artist, he is a devout fan of great paintings. “One of my favorite pastimes is to travel to any art museum I can and stand face-to-face with the world’s best paintings,” he says. “I personally collect images of paintings, and I have 5,200 favorites. All of the images in the book are included in my collection.

“All the paintings in the book are over 100 years old – by the likes of Titian, Gerome, Wyeth, Repin, Lambert, Boldini, Watson, Sorolla y Bastida, and two by Singer Sargent, one of the world’s most renowned portrait artists,” he continues. “In fact,” – and this he says with a wink and smile – “I asked each of the artists – incidentally cat lovers all – for permission. They all loved the idea of the book and have received complimentary copies.”

For you see with each portrait, a portrait of a cat is superimposed into the image to look as if it actually belonged there. One of the cats is the beloved Betchkal family cat, a beautiful black-striped brown-and-gray tabby named Robert Robberabudabi, a.k.a. Bob Kitty. After passing through his nine lives, Bob now resides peacefully underground in the side yard of their home in the Third Ward. Another is the neighbors’ cat named Clifford the Cat, a strikingly majestic orange tabby. The remainder, alas, are random cats from the Internet, although one portrait in the book actually had a cat in the original painting. Will you be able to figure out which one?

Just about every one of the 18 stories ends with the following or similar phrase: “… the cat went to sleep on his chair …” which explains the cover photo of Vincent Van Gogh’s “Chair” with a lovingly superimposed tabby cat sleeping on a rattan woven seat. “My boys learned this quickly and could recite it on cue,” Betchkal adds.

Why else would a birder like Betchkal write a book about cats for everyone to read aloud and enjoy?

“I am an environmentalist and an ornithologist,” he concludes. “I have been working hard to persuade cat lovers to keep their cats entertained indoors rather than allow them outdoors. Millions of birds and small mammals are killed every year by outdoor cats. Several of the stories in the book subtly stress the importance of keeping cats indoors.”

Cat Tales, by Steve Betchkal, self-published by his own Smarticus Publishing, is available directly from the author for $10 plus shipping. Reach him at (715) 832-7359 or gonebirding88@hotmail.com. It is also available at The Local Store, 205 N. Dewey St., Eau Claire.