There are few certainties in life: death, taxes and cats on the internet. Despite being allergic, I get a vicarious cat fix from friends’ felines, Twitter, and some great science-fiction and fantasy.
Some of the stories I enjoy are:
The Cat Who Walked a Thousand Miles
by Kij Johnson
“When a fire destroys her home and scatters her colony, Small Cat sets out to find the home of her ancestor, the Cat From the North, and to make her own name along the way.”
Whilst over a decade old now, this is a beautiful, timeless fantasy. It’s a coming of age tale, an epic adventure, a story about love and loss, culture, heritage and belonging. Whilst the story is not short on drama, it’s written in a very gentle narrative style that draws the reader in and on.
Amazon US | Amazon UK | Google Play Books | Tor.com
The Starship and the Temple Cat
By Yoon Ha Lee
From old Japan in The Cat Who Walked a Thousand Miles to a futuristic space setting, is The Starship and the Temple Cat. This is a tale of cats, ghosts and sentient spaceships. It addresses loyalty, duty and faith but again, not with a Western gaze.
Read on Beneath Ceaseless Skies
For He Can Creep
By Siobhan Caroll
“A Tor.com original, Siobhan Carroll’s For He Can Creep is a dark fantasy story of poetry, devilry, and cats in a battle of good vs. evil for the fate of humanity.”
This is such a lyrical story with huge depth and breadth. The use of punctuation help tell the tale, for example, exclamation marks are abundant in the scenes where Jeoffry is antagonised.
I absolutely adore this story and it’s one I come back to read frequently. It only gets better, particularly since I was informed it’s based on a poem written in the 1700s, Jubilate Agno, Fragment B, [For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry] by Christopher Smart
Amazon US | Amazon UK | Google Play Books | Tor.com
What other SFF literature has cats? I’d love to expand this list.