CAT LOVE

A tale of love, longing, and the culture that both confines and liberates us—narrated by a cat.

The narrator of this slender novel is the epitome of cat. In her long life she has known the love of her mother in a perfect spot beneath an old tool shed, has loved her own kittens in a less ideal location beneath a coffee shop, and has cycled through the lives of several humans and ended up with her own true human love, a handsome, cultured shoe salesman she refers to as the Mustache. She and the Mustache have a life driven by quiet joys. They listen to Coltrane and Son House, absorb audiobooks while the Mustache cooks dinner, appreciate a wide range of poetic verse, and spend Sundays together filled with “love and stillness.” Then, one day, the Mustache goes on a trip and leaves our narrator in the care of a neighbor boy who, in spite of his seemingly kind nature, kidnaps the cat and sells her to “some guy in a tacky trench coat,” who delivers her to a laboratory. There, as part of a 10-day course designed to “improve emotional competency,” our narrator is sealed inside a literal version of Schrödinger’s box—a mirror-lined container, devoid of food and water, wherein she is theoretically both alive and dead as long as the box remains unopened. For the cat, however, her life and death are anything but theory and, as the novel examines her life before the box and in its unusual aftermath, the joyous images of this cat’s most catlike experiences cast a dappled spotlight on the human world, too. Inventive, erudite, funny, and devastating, this debut novel by memoirist and poet Morín eschews traditional plot in favor of the illuminating power of the image. While this may result in a frustrating experience for readers with a literal expectation of what a novel must do, this book’s effervescent energy has its own pleasures, which more than make up for any holes in the plot.

A bright, fresh book that is best enjoyed with a record playing in the background and a cat on the reader’s lap.