PICKLES VS. THE ZOMBIES

Not even the zombie apocalypse can keep a cat from her beloved two-legged pets.

Mounting anxiety after her 2-year-old charge, Connor, doesn’t come home from day care and the pet grown-ups go missing as well at last drives house cat Pickles to screw her courage to the sticking place and set out to the rescue. The world has turned strange, she discovers, as many humans have become vicious zombies—the slow, stupid kind, fortunately—and left the streets strewn with their half-eaten victims. Pickles is less disturbed by that (“I’m an indoor cat who watches way too much TV. My tolerance for dramatic violence might be a little messed up”) than by the annoyances of locks, doorknobs, and finding food that doesn’t run away. As she searches she faces challenges ranging from thuggish sewer rats to human fugitives hungry enough to trap and eat domestic animals…not to mention, of course, all those dangerously infectious undead. Luckily, she acquires a band of loyal sidekicks along the way, including a portly urban raccoon and a berserker hamster. Pickles’ steadfast loyalty makes her seem more doglike than feline, but she certainly has heart, and by the end she’s a long way from the shy, unadventurous kitty she began as. Misri artfully leaves gorier details to the imagination, so readers who really don’t thrill to blood and guts can focus on the adventure rather than the body parts.

A rousing odyssey.