Cat Tale

RHUBARB (301 pp.)--H. Allen Smith --Doubleday ($2).

H. Allen Smith has reason to like cats better than dogs. Before he turned to writing best-selling books (Low Man on a Totem Pole, Life in a Putty Knife Factory), he wrote newspaper features, including movie-star interviews. During that ordinarily harmless tour of duty, the late Lupe Velez once became so agitated that she threw a small brown dog at him. Now, at long last, Author Smith has written a novel about a cat, a large yellow alley cat called Rhubarb.

Rhubarb, which comes from Jackson Heights, Long Island, falls heir to a fortune left by a Manhattan hair-oil magnate. By virtue of the same will, it also becomes owner of a big-league baseball club known as the New York Loons. It is natural enough for such a cat to be: 1) a guest expert on a radio quiz program (so that Smith can have some fun with Information Please); 2) play host at a literary cocktail party (with much kidding of a large lady who is presumably Elsa Maxwell); 3) pose for a TIME cover (still on the unused "bank").

Much of Rhubarb's humor has the delicate bouquet of a subway rest room, but in spots the book is good slapstick satire and funny in a broad Broadway way. By the end, with the help of a Runyonesque assortment of low characters, including an outfielder and a lady wrestler, Author Smith somehow manages to make it into something resembling a novel. Cat lovers may have their doubts.

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