Junji Ito's Cat Diary

My beloved husband keeps insisting that I read manga – or more specifically selected works from his extensive (and ever-growing) Junji Ito collection. In *general* I'm not a huge fan of the more commercial manga I've glanced at, but Junji Ito is undoubtedly in a league of his own. And I'll admit that it was easier to twist my arm and get me to read Junji Ito's Cat Diary because, well, cats. We've got the hardcover collector's edition and while the Cat Diary is not in Ito's usual creepy-AF, near-cosmic horror, what he does with the Cat Diary is special. Very special. 

For all his reputation for grim and exceptionally strange horror, what Ito does with this slim volume is tell us about his cats, Yon and Mu, and the (mis)adventures they experience. He fictionalises his life, casting himself as J-kun, and his then-fiancée A-ko in their own manga. The joy comes in with how he portrays life with these felines – darkly humorous takes that flirt with then subvert all the expected horror tropes he's known for. But with cats. And no one dies a grisly death, swallowed by a mountain or menaced by giant floating heads. Let's admit it: cats can be kinda creepy in their own way.

And I laughed. A lot. The little tales are short, so if you need to decompress after a torrid work day, then you'll most certainly gain a few much-needed chuckles that won't tax your concentration. I felt that this was almost a shorter, sweeter answer to Paul Gallico's The Silent Miaow (at least in my mind a vaguely comparable work). Interspersed between the strips we also have short interviews with Ito that offer small glimpses into his world. And he really does seem like a really lovely person (well, duh, he loves cats). Even if he draws his wife with no pupils in her eyes (which apparently made her rather vexed).