Top Ten Tuesday – Animal Companions

This week’s topic from That Artsy Reader Girl is all about the animal companions, whether they’re loyal, cuddly, amusing or terrifying.

1. Richard Parker

Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Richard Parker is a ferocious Bengal tiger who ends up lost at sea and sharing the lifeboat with the book’s protagonist. I had overall mixed feelings about Martel’s book, but I loved the evolving dynamic between the two survivors, animal and human.

2. Behemoth

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Behemoth the Cat, the gun-toting, vodka-swilling companion of Satan, has now been covered on my blog multiple times, but I could never leave him off this list.

3. Bob the wire-haired terrier

Dumb Witness by Agatha Christie
Dame Agatha dedicated this Hercule Poirot mystery to her beloved dog Peter, and some of its more whimsical passages imagine Bob’s inner running monologue whenever he comes across Poirot and Hastings.

4. Ellegon

Guardians of the Flame series by Joel Rosenberg
Ellegon is a young dragon companion to the heroes of this fantasy series, about a group of student friends who find themselves transported into a dangerous magical world when they participate in a role-playing game. Powerful and wise-cracking, he’s one of the series’ most colourful characters.

5. Pantalaimon

His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
Every person in this universe has a daemon, a physical manifestation of their inner self that takes a form of an animal. I never quite fell in love with Pullman’s books the way I did with other fantasy series, but I always liked this concept of an external soul. Pantalaimon, the daemon of Lyra, the heroine of the trilogy, eventually settles on a form of a pine marten.

6. The Little Humpbacked Horse

Konyok-Gorbunok (The Little Humpbacked Horse) by Pyotr Yershov
This Russian fairy-tale was one of my absolute favourite childhood books, in no small part thanks to the rich and sumptuous illustrations that I could spend hours with. In this story, a magical little horse helps Ivan, a peasant’s son, carry out the demands of a cruel and capricious Tsar.

7. Greebo

Discworld series by Terry Pratchett
The series has a number of memorable animal characters, but I just have to go with Greebo, the scarred, foul-tempered, one-eyed grey tomcat belonging to Nanny Ogg the witch (who insists against all evidence that he’s just a sweet and harmless softie).

8. Grey cat and black cat

On Cats by Doris Lessing
In this moving and unsentimental memoir, Lessing wrote about the many cats in her life, including the two female cats known simply as grey cat and black cat, whose contrasting personalities couldn’t be more like chalk and cheese.

9. Rocky the German Shepherd

Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window by Tetsuko Kuroyanagi
Rocky is a faithful companion from another childhood favourite, based on real-life childhood of Japanese TV personality Tetsuko Kuroyanagi. It’s a collection of charming stories about a lively trouble-prone young girl who attends an unconventional school, with classes taking place inside old railroad cars.

10. Captain Flint

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
Long John Silver is an iconic one-legged pirate with an iconic pirate pet, a parrot named Captain Flint usually found perching on his shoulder. Captain Flint is thought to be two hundred years old, and known to squawk a collection of pirate phrases.