“Most of the cats I come across must be able to sense right away that I am nothing but a cat in human clothes.”

This short memoir could have fit next week’s nonfiction focus, but because it is translated from the Hebrew I’ve chosen to use it to round off our literature in translation week. Poet Anat Levit didn’t start off as a cat lady, yet in the year following her divorce she adopted five kittens. The first, Shelly, was a present for her small daughters, Daphna and Shlomit, and then another four fluffballs tempted her at the pet store: Afro, Lady, Mocha and Jesse. Add on Cleo, a beautiful Siamese she bought on impulse from a neighbour, and Mishely, a local stray she started to look after, and there you have it: the seven cats who took over her life.

This is a loose narrative filled with little observations on the differences in her cats’ appetites, mannerisms, and relationships to each other and to the author. As much as she loves them, Levit seems to find the animals a heavy emotional burden: she constantly wonders if she’s doing her best for them, treating them all the same (better than her children?), and so on.

Unfortunately, I felt the most attention is paid to the cats’ various illnesses and vet visits, and especially the periods of decline leading to each one’s death. Pets only live a fraction as long as humans, so books about loving them often incorporate death, and some might argue that it’s an essential part of the story: that your care for an animal companion encompasses their whole life and includes the duty to ease their death. Fair enough. But it can be a downer to read about. So, cat lovers, think carefully about whether you can handle the content; if you’re after sweet anecdotes and antics, this is not that book. Something about either the writing or the translation meant that I found the tone either too matter-of-fact (recounting the physical facts of deterioration) or melodramatic, e.g.,

That evening, it dawned on me that I had to hurry up and release Cleo from the relics of existence that survived in his body. Sometimes, death dawdles for no reason. On the threshold of my cats’ demise, it prescribed the kind of suffering that seemed to have erased the sweetness of all their previous years at once.

– and not often finding a balance. Still, there are some sweet moments that pet owners will appreciate. (A similar read from last year: The Writer’s Cats by Muriel Barbery.)

[133 pages]

With thanks to Serpent’s Tail for the free copy for review.