Cat Post

A short collection of humorous vignettes from the life of a cat owner.

Maggots’ (Cupcake Factory, 2015, etc.) short book, lavishly illustrated by Jacobus, gives readers dozens of lively, humorous glimpses into the always problematic dynamic between cats and their owners. Overall, the author enhances the immediacy of this account by casting many reflections here in the form of diary entries of both cat and man, and these are filled with a raucous humor that will make this short book enjoyable for cat owners everywhere. The interactions in these pages may be fanciful—humans and cats simply talk back and forth to one another, and there’s a buddy-movie vibe to the whole thing—but they’ll nevertheless be immediately recognizable to cat people specifically and pet owners in general. When the narrator, Human, asks his pet, Old Cat, “What are you going to do today? Why don’t you make yourself useful and find a part-time job or something?” many will nod knowingly when the feline replies, “Nah, I’m just gonna lie around, maybe lick myself. I’ll probably destroy some of your expensive furniture. Anyway, catch you later.” The book touches upon nearly every aspect of cat ownership, from the damage they do during their seemingly manic bursts of energy to their scattershot understanding of sanitation to their complete disregard for human privacy. The cat-as–alarm-clock, the cat-as-noisemaker, the cat-as–garbage-disposal—and, charmingly (though always with a cynical edge), the cat-as–friend-and-companion—are all brought to life in short scenes illustrated in either full-color images or energetic pen-and-ink drawings by Jacobus. Readers get a cat’s-eye perspective on everything from the pets’ wanderlust to their hatred of baths to their curious, and often repulsive, habit of presenting their owners with killed and mutilated animal corpses as presents. Both sides liberally express their exasperation (“Do you know what it's like as a single father raising a brat of a cat?” the human asks at one point), but there’s an undercurrent of grudging affection in these pages that will likewise strike cat owners as familiar.

A smart, sarcastic, illustrated look at the cat-keeping lifestyle.