This reviewer is emphatically not a cat person. So it’s a testament to my faith in Lucy Knisley that I eagerly picked up Woe: A Housecat’s Story of Despair.
The comics included here will be familiar to the bestselling author’s numerous social media followers; over many years she chronicled the misadventures and many (many) demands of her charmingly grouchy cat Linney as webcomics. Now, they’ve been collected into a single volume for the first time. Readers unfamiliar with Linney will benefit from Knisley’s introduction, in which she explains why her drawings of Linney don’t look exactly the way one might expect a cat to look: “A lifetime of trying to draw cats ‘well,’” Knisley writes, “has shown me that it’s much better to try to draw their personality, rather than an accurate visual representation.”
In Knisley’s artwork, Linney is a vaguely cat-shaped being with personality to spare. She is the color of butterscotch pudding, with a fluffy tail, no nose to speak of, and eyes and a mouth that are expressive beyond belief. Her green eyes can go wide and attentive, or squinty and sly (and in at least one case, they’re lit with the fire of devilry); her one canine tooth sticks out when she yowls in despair or just for attention.
Knisley’s comics chronicle dynamics that will be familiar to pet owners, and cat owners in particular: the pet who whines loudly for food only to turn up their nose at what’s on offer; the toddler whose fur-pulling affection is barely tolerated; the long-suffering spouse who grudgingly indulges the cat’s foibles. Since the real-life Linney passed away in 2020, Knisley also chronicles the inevitable pain of losing a beloved member of the family in sections that will undoubtedly affect readers emotionally, whether they’re cat people or not. The individual cartoons are short and clever, but collectively, they compile a funny, touching saga that explores what it means to care for a beloved four-legged companion through thick and thin.