WHEN YOU HEAR MEOW

A man reflects on his marriage and a cat and teddy bear who enlivened it in Gould’s novel.

Don tells the story of how his live-in relationship with a woman named Gloria was affected by the addition of a cat named Alec to their lives. (The story is framed as Don telling the tale to four kittens in the present day.) Don wanted to make Gloria happy, but he was a dog person and laid down strict rules: If Alec started destroying the furniture or soiling the floor, she’d be on the first car ride back to Gloria’s farmhouse. The couple were enjoying their shared life: “After three marriages between us consisting of three children—all girls, three dogs and multiple inside and outside cats, we had finally crossed the bridge to realizing our dream,” Don notes. “The dream of spending our life together.” The addition of a pet adds unknown variables to that dream, but Don and Alec gradually get to know each other and learn each other’s routines. Alec seems preternaturally sensitive to the humans around her, and she adjusts to house living with speed and grace. Soon, comfortable, shared activities develop. “Alec would follow me into the office, and we would begin our ritual of her and me clawing at the scratching post for wisdom,” Don relates. As the narrative progresses, Alec forms a relationship with a teddy bear, Ted-D, and both are so vivid in their behaviors and personalities that Don begins to hear their speech, both to him and to each other.

The narrative gently and accurately depicts the slow and seemingly magical ways that pets can insinuate themselves into the lives of humans. The manner in which Gould has Don anthropomorphize both Alec and Ted-D is consistently touching and will doubtless strike a chord with the cat owners who are the book’s natural audience. The story shifts very comfortably from quotidian household details and family affairs to deeper philosophical considerations, as when a chat with Alec moves quickly from the surprise revelation that all cats can read to the question of the “nine lives” cats have: “What number life am I on? It does not matter to you, nor to me,” Alec tells Don. “It only matters that we enjoy life as we do. With one another, with love.” The text itself is conversational and unadorned in style, written in a realistic tone, as if having discussions with cats were an everyday occurrence. Gould effectively crafts Don and Gloria as ordinary, likable people, and this works well in contrasting their daily activities with the expanded worldview that they come to know through their interactions with Alec and Ted-D. The deliberate passage of time is rendered in straightforward, natural way, and the events of the book’s final act, which will be familiar to aficionados of pet-centered books, are handled with care and pathos that many readers will be sure to appreciate.

A slow-paced and ultimately affecting fictional chronicle of two people living with special companions.