"They call me Mama-cat and I answer to it, so I suppose that is my name, though it wasn't always. I was born in Andalusia, southern Spain, in Granada, an area that is hot in summer and cold in winter, and I survived thanks to the ingenuity of my mother, who hid me in a deserted house along with the brothers and sisters of my litter." So begins the picaresque, picturesque tale, true in the telling by its feline protagonist. She describes her neighborhood,...