Look At A Book: The Cats Collection

Okay so, technically, we’re cheating a little bit today. My last two ‘Look At A Book’ posts have both been, as the title suggests, about one book. However, with Cats Alone, Cats Wild and Cats Home, they kind of have to come as a trio. This is my first ever completed series as a trilogy and my only middle-grade focused books, and Cats Alone was the first book I ever wrote and published, so this series does mean a lot to me. If you’re as excited to take a closer look at The Cats Collection as I am, let’s get right into it!

Everything Under The RainbowThe Essentials

A heart-warming feline trilogy.

Genre: Animal Fiction

Age Range: Middle-Grade

Length: Three Short Novels

Main Character: Shadow, he/him

Themes: Family/Found Family, Overcoming Trauma, Abandonment, Friendship, Survival, Growing Up, Parenthood

Excerpt – From Cats Alone

Dawn is pale, yellow-gold fingers stretching through the windowpanes and stroking my back and my face. It twinges my whiskers until I wake up. Today, the sun feels cold; it isn’t freezing, but it’s cold enough to be different from the normal air. Cold enough to tell me… this is wrong.

Bolting upright, I begin to pace, alarmed. What is it? What is… something is missing. Joseph. Joseph! He’s not here. There’s no scent, there’s no warmth, and there’s no body. He’s gone.

Eyes wide, I turn to see everyone else still asleep—the twins on the arms of the chair, Sophia just next to me and Tess on the floor, next to where Joseph’s legs were settled last night. I need them. I need help.

‘Ruby! Where’s Joseph?’ While she is waking up, I strain my ears to hear the sound of distant footsteps, of furniture being moved around, of anything! But there’s nothing. Just deafening silence.

‘Is he not here?’ She’s up now, hopping past me to get to Sapphire. She pats and rubs her head against her twin to wake her up. ‘Did you hear anything last night, Saph? Anything?’

‘What’s all the fuss about?’ Now Tess is awake and Sophia is moving, mewing a yawn, so that’s everyone. ‘Where has the man gone?’

‘That’s Joseph, to you!’ Ruby snaps, turning on Tess and arching her back. ‘What have you done with him, dog? As soon as you show up, he disappears!’

‘I’ve only just woken up, the same as you,’ Tess assures her, stepping back, ‘I don’t know anything, dear…’

Ruby’s next outburst is interrupted by scratching. Whining. The sounds we know well; the sounds that we fear. The sounds that Sophia has whimpering nightmares about. But this time, they don’t stop. The scratching becomes louder as the whining becomes barking.

Bark. Scratch. Bark. Splinter. Scrape.

Flying to Sophia, I put a paw over her and keep her close. Sapphire flees to Ruby, the two almost becoming one.

Howl. Rip. Shred.

Tess begins to near the kitchen door even as I meow at her to stop. She needs to get back before she is torn to pieces. I can see it playing out in my mind: the monster flying out in a storm of wood and rubbish, right into Tess—

With a final crash, he appears. White skin stretches across his ribs so that you can see every bone. His eyes are wide, with the bright whites showing. His paws shovel buckets of rubbish away as he picks himself up off the floor and rushes out of the crater he’s created. No! He’s heading straight towards the brave dog who stands between him and us.

Tess!

But he stops, panting. His short ears are flopped over and one of his huge eyes is splashed with brown. He has a body that should be built like a barrel, but it’s all bone and hair. Desperation burns in his eyes, brighter than any emotion I’ve ever seen before. His tail bats against the kitchen door: thud, thud, thud.

No one breathes. I can’t blink. This is it. Joseph is gone and the monster is unleashed. Everything has spiralled into chaos and there’s nothing I can do but watch.

The Background

As I mentioned above, Cats Alone was the first book I ever published. At first, it was only available in print and I think it sold one or two copies in the few years that it took me to start looking at writing and publishing books as a serious thing. Obviously, it was nowhere near the level that I expect my current books to be at during that time, so I’m glad that only a few people read it in that state, but regardless, I’m still proud of it. It also had my previous or deadname initials on the front, which definitely doesn’t feel great to look back on, but I still have a copy hanging around my bookshelf. Oddly enough, the first print edition was also larger (in height) than any of my other books – still not sure why that happened, haha. Cats Alone taught me a lot about what I can accomplish when I set my mind to something, and the fact that I revamped and picked up the series and then finished it is just a personal testament, for me, to the fact that this is my true passion. I always intended for Cats Alone to have two sequels, and I think I had the names in mind as well back then, but seeing it completed is just an amazing feeling. I’m going to be releasing a special print edition with all three books in one in it too, soon, which is definitely going to look great, so watch out for that! I also like that the first edition was dedicated to my brother, and each following edition of each of the books has been dedicated to Kassidy, one of my really good friends who I met in college. I think that’s one of the loveliest parts of being an author – I can preserve shards of my relationships with my loved ones in the written art that I create. I’ve also included the first edition covers of Cats Alone below, which obviously aren’t the best-looking, but I think it’s an interesting visual marker of how far I’ve come in my publishing journey.

Is It Right For You?

The Cats Collection is a really interesting one with regard to audience. Although it’s intended for a middle-grade audience (i.e. slightly younger than YA, for others from the UK I was using the space between Year Six and Year Seven as a general guiding point), both teenagers and adults have read the books and enjoyed them, so I really don’t think there’s a definite limit here. As a prerequisite, I would say that liking cats in general is probably a good idea if you’re planning to dive into this series, and being okay with extending your suspension of disbelief to include those cats being able to talk to each other and other animals. Trust me, I considered writing Cats Alone as a completely dialogue-free novel for this purpose, and I really think including speech was the best way to go.

But hey, why not get started with the first book and let me know what you think?

Cats Alone can be read for free here or purchased here, if you’d like to support me!

(You can also tip me on my Ko-Fi page if you’d like to help out more directly!)