PEEING ON THE BUSHES
By ERNIE BUSH
As told by James Carville

Aer Amerika Books
ISBN 978156797987090X
208 pages; Hardcover
GENRE(S): Nonfiction, Memoir, Cats, Politics

Reviewed by Ursula English

The Bush family has a long history of books written by their pets, beginning with C. Fred's Story, written in the mid-'80s when Pater Bush was the veep, and best-selling photo book Millie's Book, published in the early '90s. But those books were "edited" by Barbara Bush, wife of G.H.W.B. and mother to a whole carload of clowns. Peeing on the Bushes is the story of Ernie Bush, an orange polydactyl who was deemed too wild for the White House and shipped off to live with Bush family friends clear on the other side of the country in California. If you thought Ernie had anything nice to say about his former forever family, you'd be mistaken.

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Ernie was a stray who was adopted by the Bushes during the 1990s. According to a statement George made to school children in Bakersfield, California, "Ernie the Cat never gave up, and now he's running the governor's mansion." But Ernie's habit of clawing up the historic White House furniture drove the Bushes to pack him up to live with a former campaign manager in Brentwood. Shortly thereafter, Ernie ran away, and the Bushes showed a particularly sangfroid lack of concern. Laura Bush's press secretary was quoted as saying that the Bushes "know that Ernie has a record of landing in some good homes, so maybe his third life will be just as nice," and "they realize that he is a free spirit, and hope he is having fun on the beaches of Malibu." Another White House press secretary said that, "Ernie's off in a far away land by himself now." Sounds pretty ominous! Maybe he got disappeared? Ernie showed up a month later, strolling down Los Angeles's Avenue of the Stars.

Ernie begins with his origin story, told with a mix of sass and contempt. He says he was "terrorized and taunted" by the Bush's dog Spot, not "found," and he devotes an entire chapter to how angry he still is about being used on the campaign trail as an example of how an "undercat" can do well in life, noting that there are no similarities between his early life and George W.'s (whom he calls "Dub"), stating, "that guy has the smarts of an unweaned kitten." Ernie confesses a sweet spot for his "ma'am-a" Laura Bush, who named him after Ernest Hemingway, the writer who kept a colony of polydactyl cats at his house on Key West. Ernie reveals this shocking secret: that "Dub" thought Ernest Hemingway himself had six toes, and that's why polydactyls are called Hemingway cats. This is followed by two paragraphs of HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAs, making the page look almost like something from Jonathan Safan Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.

Much of the book centers on Ernie's life with the Bush family during the time "Dub" was governor of Texas, and campaigning for the presidency. He reveals a portrait of the Bush family long suspected but never confirmed—that George is phenomenally dumb and Machiavellian, that Laura is long-suffering but a little power mad (he gives us a two-page bullet list of times he saw her have temper tantrums when she didn't get her way), and that the twins (whom he calls Thing 1 and Thing 2) are really loud. Ernie also spends an entire chapter on the baseball steroid scandal for some reason. Ernie's narrative is hilarious and offers a view to the Bush Family seldom seen by outsiders.

(April 1, 2008)