Rating:

“Cats had this sneaky way of crawling into your life and making you fall in love with them.”

Author: Tanya Guerrero

Can one shy feral cat bring five strangers together? Of course!

The story begins with Cat (also sometimes called Gatito and Itim); Cat is an eleven-year-old feral cat who has never had a home. He sees cats indoors, looking out with lazy eyes through windows, and sometimes he wonders what that would be like. But the fresh air and the people watching is for him. Besides, humans can be so cruel. He’s heard mothers tell their children to stay away because he’s dirty and diseased. He’s had young boys throw rocks at him and people kick him. Better to stay independent and wily.

That being said, Cat has slowly built a reliable bastion of human friends, and they’ll be important to his survival once he becomes ill and they all find out about each other.

First off, we have Núria, whom cat calls Rainbow Lady. Núria is a dyed-in-the-wool, single, 40-year-old mismatched cat lady. She’s defined by bright colors, sloppy buns, and her daily trek around Brooklyn to feed stay cats. Stalking Núria is her long-lost half-sister, Lily. Cat thinks of her as Bright-Pink Person.

After her father’s death, Lily has become aware of her father’s double life and secret family, and she has struck out to befriend her sister. Problem is, she’s just not brave enough to do it. Even though she uprooted her entire life, moved to a new city, took a terrible job, and steadily follows an unknowing Núria everywhere. We are supposed to find this sweet and endearing, by the way, and not entirely creepy and inappropriate. This problem relationship will also instantly be resolved in one sloppy conversation anyway.

For the male cast, we have an uber rich, successful hermit author suffering from writer’s block. He conveniently lives in a nearby Brownstown and has also started feeding Cat. He’s seen Núria feeding Cat through his window and has fallen deeply in love. Also in his 40s, he is terrified to talk to a woman, so he leaves Núria Post-It notes and the two begin an unseen filtration.

Omar, who gives Cat treats and is known as The Cheery Mailman, knows everyone in the neighborhood and is defined by his optimism. Everyone loves him, except his nagging, social climbing boyfriend, who keeps telling him that being a mailman is bad and that he should make something of his life. We are supposed to agree with the status seeking, money hungry boyfriend and want poor Omar to quit his job for something more ambitious (and probably stressful).

And finally, we have Bong, the local, recently widowed Bodega owner, who Cat appropriately knows as Sad Bodega Man. As Cat brings people into Bong’s circle, he starts to form a newfound family and find peace in his grief instantly.

Image by Creative Canvas from Pixabay

I love cozy books and I am obsessed with cats. I have 8 of my own, plus a feral colony to care for, plus a rotating assortment of foster cats. I’ve brought in strays and ferals from outside before, some for medical treatment and release and some for medical treatment and adoption (depending on if they liked the indoor life.) I’ve done this for over 30 cats and made a close-knit community of friends also involved in cat welfare, so I fully anticipated loving this book. (Fun fact – strays are cats that have had a home with humans at some point in their life and were not born in the wild; ferals are cats born in the wild who have not had a home with people. The terminology is important in the rescue community). What’s better than cozy vibes and cats? Plus, that cover art!! I tried so hard, but Cat’s People just doesn’t ring true.

First, let’s talk about the star, Cat. Cat actually doesn’t narrate as much as you’d think, which is kind of good, because the author makes him altogether too much like a human in a fur suit. I kind of wonder if she has been close to a cat before. Cat does things like tap on Post-It’s to get Awkward Neighbor Guy to write love letters and drop acorns on those letters repeatedly until he gets the idea that he should give his unseen lady-love a gift. Cat also understands English perfectly and gets the complexities of all the character’s relationships. Ummm, what?

Also, feral cats are not this friendly this quickly with people. They have often lead lives of fear and abuse and do not, say, instantly seek help when sick, or rub on your shins after having known you for a day, or, and I am not kidding, attack a rapist in the face in some 1960s Batman like move. This is not a cat. This is what a kid’s book would portray a cat as, and so it falls flat. We’re so aware Cat isn’t real. We lose interest. Also, why even is there an attempted rape in a “cozy” book?

The rest of the cast are entirely interchangeable. First, we have the insta-romance that just bombs. How are Núria and Collin in their 40s? They read like high schoolers having their first crush. Collin cannot look Núria in the eyes. He is too shy to talk to her at the Starbucks-like coffee shop she works at, which he visits daily. I am beyond frustrated. I knew guys like this in college, and they’re still single. Women hate this. Women in their forties don’t tolerate this.

Of course, Núria is no better. At 40, she’s afraid of her mother’s disapproval, doesn’t know when to stop drinking or what her limit is, thinks dropping the F-bomb occasionally makes her an adult, and apparently doesn’t understand that you can use a lent roller on clothes. As a 37-year-old woman myself, I’m not impressed and not buying it.

Also, no one knows what career they want or where they want to go in life. Y’all, are you adults? Doesn’t matter what you want. Get up, go to work, and shut-up.

Omar is continually told he needs to better himself, that being a mailman is bad. It would be annoying and we would feel sorry for him, but his idea to cure a widower of the loss of his soulmate is to take him to an amusement park . . . soooo . . . yeah.

Anyway, I could go on and on about how unreal the characters are. But let’s move on.

The story stalls halfway through, as if the author doesn’t know where to go, and it becomes difficult to read; it just ambles, involved in the boring moments of the character’s daily lives, from making/ordering coffees to delivering mail. The writing is nothing special, the characters are all stereotypes and all sound suspiciously like each other, and the world is just too ooey-gooey second chance perfect with no one having any real flaws or real problems. I wanted to love this, but ultimately, I just couldn’t. The ending floundered in a literal sea of sap, and you could practically here the “they all lived happily ever after” that an old timey children’s show would end with. Just no. It’s not working, it’s not vibing. I see and appreciate the idea, but the execution fails. Sigh. Not recommended.

– Frances Carden

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Frances Carden
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