Are you talking to me?

A couple of days ago I picked up Garth Stein's The Art of Racing in the Rain. I've read the first few pages and, to be honest, am not that struck on it. It's told from the perspective of a dog and generally I'm a sucker for the talking or anthropomorphised animal.

So here's a list of seven of my favourites:

• Stuart Little. I was about six or seven, and had started reading happily by myself, and there's this mouse, but he can speak, and drive a motorcycle, if memory serves correctly. (I think it may be the second book.) It took me a long time to separate fact from fiction.
• Bagheera the panther, from Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book. Really, this cat's far too cool for school.
• Fievel from Richard Adams' Watership Down gets the vote for freakiest bunny in a book
• Pedlar from Garry Kilworth's House of Tribes. A mouse in a house, but not used to being so. (Around about the same time I read this in my teens, I also read a book in translation about a cat. I think it was a Turkish or Hungarian author, and it was good, and there was a sequel. I think the picture of the front was of a Russian Blue, but I can't remember the name of the book. A single word I think, probably the cat's name. Maybe beginning with G, or am I thinking of Grendel? Obviously it didn't make as much of an impression as the meeces.)
• Roald Dahl's Fantastic Mr Fox (I am looking forward with trepidation to the film version)
• I'd probably choose a character from Orwell's Animal Farm too, but I was put off that by ten force-fed pages in school so have never read it. Sticking with the farmyard though, I'll take the easy, cheesy option and go with Charlotte the spider.
• And of course to wrap up there's the one who can't talk, who really is a dog. Buck, from Jack London's Call of the Wild.

And in case you're wondering, Aesop's Fables don't count. They deal in stereotypes, not characters.