Shirley Rousseau Murphy (1928–2022)

Joe Grey is a cat who has inexplicably found himself possessed of human-style intelligence and the capacity for human speech, although he doesn't like to do it in front of people. Then he witnesses a murder and has reason to believe someone is going to try to pin it on his human.

It's a really cute idea, but I have to say the execution just felt kind of... weird... to me. The author is prone to describing things, especially the cats, in this slightly over-done, almost flowery-feeling way that kept making me stop and wonder if it was meant to be some sort of self-parody. I don't think it was, though, which is kind of a shame, because I think this could have been really fun if it had leaned into the absurdity of its premise a little more and thrown in some humor.

It did still have an entertaining moment or two, and I like the author's spot-on observations about how normal cats communicate using body language, but mostly I think reading it just gave me lots of distracting thoughts of how I would have written everything in it differently.… (más)