BAD CAT!

A guileless, off-site narrator futilely entreats Fluffykins—green-eyed, ginger-furred, and utterly recalcitrant—to apologize for successive misdeeds.

Encounters with a glass vase of pink flowers and a basket of knitting yield predictably naughty results. The narrator ineffectively cajoles: “Now, that’s two things you need to apologize for…. / Fluffykins! What have you done now?” After attacking the sofa, the computer keyboard, the toilet paper, and the blinds and peeing on the floor, the cat’s banished outdoors. “Now go and think about what you’ve done.” A spell of rain brings the bedraggled cat to the window, customarily narrowed eyes now turned to saucers, and soon Fluffykins is indoors, making abbreviated amends: a belly-up posture of supplication and a “MEOOOW” that’s interpreted optimistically as self-reproach. “Thank you, Fluffykins. That wasn’t so hard, was it? Now, let’s clean everything up and forget all about it.” Of course, the incorrigible cat’s already on the goldfish bowl. O’Byrne ever so lightly anthropomorphizes her protagonist’s expressions, the cat’s heavy-lidded glare modulated by tiny changes in mouth position that give the cat a distinctively evil look—dramatically magnified by a view through the goldfish bowl on the final page. That fish is right to look terrified.

Nothing new here, but readers inclined to indulge feline mischief will chuckle at the extremes on display.