3.5 Stars. My friend and I are doing a reading challenge this year and one of the challenges is to read a book with a cat on the cover. I thought it would be difficult to find a book that had a cat on the cover AND was one I wanted to read. Cats are great, I have one myself, but books with cat covers? Not usually my cup of tea.
I can’t remember where I heard about Lost Cat, but it turned out this was the perfect Alexander Hamilton biography palette cleanser. Lost cat is short, cute, and has beautiful illustrations. Despite being cute and about cats, it was surprisingly heartfelt.
The author, Caroline Paul, was recovering from an experimental plane crash that left her mostly immobile for a few months. While she was recovering, one of her sweet kitties went on walkabout and didn’t reappear for weeks. When he finally waltzed back into her life, Caroline and her partner Wendy were curious about where he had been. Was he cheating on them with another family? Seeking out a feline lover? Exploring the neighborhood? To figure out where he was going, they tried employing many things including GPS tracking, a cat camera, and even a psychic.
The propelling force in this book is to find out where Tibia has been going, but really it ends up being about the journey. Caroline went through a lot during that year and her quest ended up illuminating multiple truths about her life that she wasn’t able to see before.