THAT CURIOUS THING

A 12-year-old New Yorker joins a secret society of intelligent, peace-loving cats working to save the world from felines with evil intentions.

When Cleopatra Stein and her cat, Muffin, discover that Jane Oakhurst, an old lady in their apartment building, has five talking cats, Jane explains that they’re part of the organization PURR: Peace Urgently Requires Reasonableness. Cats are responsible for most of the world’s technological advancements, but while PURR members are dedicated to stability, there’s another cat society with opposite goals: KLAW, or Cats Loving Awful Warfare (“They put the ‘K’ in just to be annoying”). When KLAW members get their paws on the plans for the aether beam, PURR’s new invention that’s intended to be a source of “pure energy,” they decide to twist its purpose for their own gain. Their goal: to blast all the dogs on Earth into outer space. It’s up to Cleo to go undercover and stop them in their tracks. In this entertaining although overstuffed tale featuring frequent, appealing black-and-white watercolor-style spot illustrations, Cleo, Jane, and their band of lovable, amusing cats are easy to root for as they go up against nasty baddies of both the human and feline varieties. The story is most fun when it leans into the cats’ zany antics, but it stumbles when it comes to the extraneous side plots. The main humans are cued white.

A somewhat bloated yet endearing and diverting story for cat lovers.