Not quite sure how this is a “memoir” unless it’s based on actual incidents with the author’s cat? Except- nothing much happens. There’s only a few standout events- Penny (the cat) gets rescued off the New York streets as a kitten, taken into an apartment where she’s well-cared for and fed. She spends all day lying around, or stalking her toys (talking to them and giving them names), napping, tripping out on catnip and contemplating the meaning of life big time. That’s it. Lots of deep thoughts, the cat staring around. There’s a few pages of interest- when the owners go on vacation (after two days Penny thinks she might starve), when they move to a new apartment, when the owners take care of someone’s canary (Penny stares into the cage both wanting to eat the bird, and commiserating with it for suffering captivity) and the one fleeting moment when Penny escapes out into the hall, and down onto the street (very brief). At the end there’s a very weird episode where the cat is under a couch cushion imagining she went through a portal into another dimension where butterflies lead her into a cave to face a troll in order to free a prince (??) Ninety percent of it though is just the cat being bored, and thinking philosophical, existential things. Someone compared this to Garfield except without lasagna and realistic drawings instead of cartoons and I laughed because well, I never cared for Garfield either. The illustrations here really are lovely in their detail, but lack expression, so kind of dull. That’s what I felt about the whole book, sorry. It’s just rather dull.
Borrowed from the public library.