Fun feline fiction

January 11, 2024 11:23 AM

I've just finished reading a lovely book that featured all animal protagonists, but chiefly cats. It was warm and funny and very comforting. Since I have two rescue gremlins of my own, it was just... nice to read about cats while they cuddled around me and slept. Can you recommend more books of the same ilk? Some difficult content okay but looking for something primarily happy-making, please? Thank you! P.S. Doesn't need to be exclusively cats. You know what I mean.
posted by Nieshka to Media & Arts (25 answers total)

May I highly recommend The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents by the late, great Terry Pratchett, my personal go-to for kind, funny, warm, comforting reads? The titular Maurice is the cat!

Bonus: if you like it, you'll have discovered Discworld (if you haven't already).
posted by smirkette at 11:29 AM on January 11 [7 favorites]

I'm not sure if this will quite fit your bill but Starter Villain by MeFi's Own^TM John Scalzi has two cats who are really awesome and play very important roles in the story. (and such a great cover!)
posted by supermedusa at 11:31 AM on January 11 [2 favorites]

meant to add that it is also a very fun read!
posted by supermedusa at 11:33 AM on January 11

This may or may not be to your taste, but I can't let this thread go by without mentioning the wildly popular middle-grade series Warriors by Erin Hunter. If you DO like them, there are like 7000 books in the series.
posted by juliapangolin at 11:46 AM on January 11 [1 favorite]

Maybe Tailchaser's Song by Tad Williams (Some difficult content, but classified by silly people as YA)

From Publisher's Weekly (copied off Amazon)

Fritti Tailchaser a young ginger tom not yet a full grown hunter, is the main cat among a host of appropriately named feline peers in this extravagantly detailed fantasy. When his best friend, Hushpad, vanishes, Fritti embarks on a quest to find her, and so enters the list of jousters against the evils of the world. His many trials and adventures bring him into contact with a veritable galaxy of cats, who speak a language for which a glossary is provided. This feline epic culminates in a decisive battle with an evil cat god. Creating as fully realized a habitat as that of Watership Down and other imaginative animal communities, California radio personality Williams's first novel should engage the fancy of cat lovers.

posted by Glinn at 11:49 AM on January 11

The Cat Who...series of mysteries by Lilian Braun featuring two Siamese cats who clue in their human companion.

More feline detection featured in Rita Mae Brown's Mrs Murphy series. The first 15 of these books are amusing but she kinda gets weird and politically sus in later books.
posted by a humble nudibranch at 11:50 AM on January 11 [1 favorite]

Content warning: I tried to pick up Erin Hunter's Warriors series, and a cat dies pretty early on. It was too close to when we lost one of ours, and I bawled for hours and couldn't pick the series back up.

I'm fine with people dying in books, but apparently can't deal if a cat dies.
posted by advicepig at 12:16 PM on January 11 [1 favorite]

Nieshka, I'd like to read the book you read. What is it?
posted by Well I never at 12:20 PM on January 11 [3 favorites]

More light essay than fiction, but very fun: Cats' A.B.C. by Beverley Nichols.
posted by JanetLand at 12:20 PM on January 11 [1 favorite]

Three Bags Full, where a flock of sheep decide they need to solve a murder.
posted by essexjan at 12:23 PM on January 11 [5 favorites]

Diane Duane's Cat Wizards (The Book of Night With Moon and To Visit The Queen) are wonderful - YA in her established So You Want To Be A Wizard universe, but a standalone duology featuring cats as wizards, available in her store.
posted by I claim sanctuary at 12:27 PM on January 11 [3 favorites]

oh yes, starter villain for sure. also on earth as it is on television. the cat who books i recall being fun/good, but i haven't read them in a long time.
posted by misanthropicsarah at 12:29 PM on January 11

oh and of course socks by beverly cleary!
posted by misanthropicsarah at 12:31 PM on January 11 [2 favorites]

Le Guin’s Catwings series can be hard to find but is worthwhile in paperback for the utterly charming illustrations. I have read it as an adult several times.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 1:00 PM on January 11 [2 favorites]

Seconding Catwings. It was written for kids, but I very much enjoyed it as an adult.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 1:10 PM on January 11

Laline Paull’s The Bees is a bee version of this; less cozy, more of a Special Chosen One Fights The Hegemony narrative, but it is very informed by real Bee Facts and it is a page-turner.

Barbara Gowdy’s The White Bone is an elephant version of this; richly developed elephant society.
posted by xueexueg at 1:30 PM on January 11 [1 favorite]

I adore Diane Duane's cat wizards (recommended above), but there's one bit in The Book of Night with Moon that makes me cry *so hard.* I still think it's worth a rec, though.
posted by velvet_n_purrs at 2:22 PM on January 11 [3 favorites]

Just one short story, but it's a cracker: Angela Carter's Puss-in-Boots, in The Bloody Chamber.
The other stories aren't what you're asking for, but Puss-in-Boots is great fun - told by the cat himself.
posted by vincebowdren at 3:12 PM on January 11 [1 favorite]

The Lost Library by Rebecca Stead and Wendy Mass is a children’s book with multiple narrators, one of whom is a cat. Super sweet story about loving books.
posted by wsquared at 6:25 PM on January 11

Paul Gallico wrote a number of books featuring cats, including The Abandoned, in which a little boy turns into a cat and, iirc, is taught to cat by a cat friend.
posted by janey47 at 10:57 PM on January 11 [1 favorite]

My Stupid Intentions is told first-person by Archy, a Beech Marten.
posted by dobbs at 10:26 AM on January 12

Esther Averill's cat club books.

Not fiction,but Cleveland Amory's cat books.
posted by brujita at 2:12 PM on January 12

Tanya Huff's Keeper's Chronicle series has a talking cat named Austin that is quite fun.
posted by gudrun at 2:26 PM on January 12

The Wild Road by Gabriel King is darker than you're looking for but I'll leave it here because it's excellent YA cat fantasy and turns out okay in the end. The Redwall series is much brighter, with no cats but lots of other tiny, furry, valiant creatures.
posted by scrubjay at 12:39 PM on January 13

Hello, I stumbled on this question a bit late, but I'd like to suggest the Catfantastic book series. They're compilations of short stories by different authors, and every story has a cat protagonist. There are contemporary pet cats, cats in ancient Egypt, cat familiars, cats in every time period and life situation imaginable. I was introduced to them many (maaany) years ago as a YA reader, and I still reread my favorite stories for comfort all these years later.
posted by JuliaIglesias at 3:17 PM on January 16 [1 favorite]