Nothing moves quite like cats. That liquid slink when they’re on the prowl. True, I’m a dog person. But I love how cats walk the windowsill between life and death, wild and domesticated. And I love how, whatever you feel about cats, you’re going to damn well respect them.
Book Recs
Catriona Ward’s book is a clear winner. What a haunting, unsettling depiction of a cat’s perspective. Ward is a mature writer with a distinct, defined voice, and she knows how to land an ending—something that feels especially uncommon with the industry pressure to write books faster and faster.
I had two very close runner-ups, though! Open Throat is written from the perspective of a starving mountain lion living in the drought-devastated land under the Hollywood sign. I was skeptical when I picked up this short, weird book: it looked at risk of being gimmicky. Instead, it juggled my heart for the full beautiful ride, only to leave me half in tears at the end. It’s almost like spoken-word poetry, accessible and an absolute gut punch.
Poets Square is a memoir from a young woman who ended up accidentally going viral online as she posted about tending to a colony of feral cats. Again, I went in skeptical. I feared it would be mostly like reading silly cat videos. Holy shit, it was so much more. I just finished Something in the Woods Loves You, which will be in my top books for the year, guaranteed. I did not expect another memoir to come in swinging so hard. Tender, compassionate, and aching, this book was a balm in a world that feels increasingly hopeless on my bad days.
I am genuinely bummed that I didn’t get to Starter Villain and Dungeon Crawler Carl this month! Both come so highly recommended from several folks who always deliver great recs!
In the end, I was really on the fence about Kawamura’s book. It had some clever dialogue, some real charm. But ultimately, it didn’t pack the kind of emotional punch I’d hoped for. It’s a great light read, maybe a tear jerker for some, but it just wasn’t a good fit for me.
I’ve just bumped into this weird comic: Everything is Fine. “Sam and Maggie are a normal couple, in a normal house, in a normal neighborhood. There is nothing strange about their heads, their neighbors or their sweet little dog. Everything is Fine.”
The first pages have suuuch a creepy vibe. Talk about goosebumps. There’s clearly a big story arc here, and while the art is on the simpler side, it’s incredibly effective.
Art
You can read more about the absolute saga of this work in “The Eccentric Story Behind History’s Most Fabulous Cat Painting.”
Among my favorite facts was that Carl had (allegedly) before tackling this project, so he found it necessary to live in what was effectively Johnson’s cat castle to study his subjects . . . for THREE YEARS.
I want to poke fun at that, but honestly, Carl aced the assignment. He also painted “Three Black Cats,” which is my new interior design goals.
“So Long, It’s Been Nice to Know You” by Boris Groh. Groh’s Instagram is a great way to discover this Ukraine-based artist’s work. You can also scroll through his prints here, all of them haunting and vaguely post-apocalyptic, but often with a playful vibe too.
Film
“The Cat Piano” (2009) is eight short minutes of beautiful poetic writing and fantastic animation. Go watch it if you haven’t yet; it has a criminally low number of views. This Australian piece won a whole batch of awards. In it, a joyful city of singing cats falls victim to a dark figure obsessed with creating a horrifying instrument—an instrument that, once complete, he plays ceaselessly.
“Sucker of Souls.” Love, Death, and Robots (Netflix) has multiple cat-oriented episodes, but this one is especially bloody, bawdy, and only five minutes long. It feels like a glimpse into a whole series. Core to the drama? A blood-hungry vampiric monster that fears only one thing: cats.
Weirdness
Blaschko’s lines. In the 20th century, German dermatologist Alfred Blaschko studied the skin of more than 150 patients. He found patterns: swirling lines, arcs and whorls. We now understood these lines as a map of our cells dividing during embryonic development.
A circulating meme claims cats can see these markings our skin. That’s just not true (as cool as it would be). But these patterns do play a direct role in why we have calico cats. Read more in “Humans Actually Have Secret Stripes And Other Strange Markings” (2023).
A few years ago, I got to edit an oracle deck! “The Outdoors Oracle” by A Nature Unknown. It was a total passion project, all the art, writing, and archetypes created by a writer-artist couple who love nature. One of my favorite cards is “Hiking Cat!” Confronting a close companion’s reluctance indeed.
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