Catymology

Hard-boiled cat with a heart of gold

Midnight Louie in
Something Fishy
By Carole Nelson Douglas
Cozy Noir Books, 2003

In this purrfectly delicious illustrated short story, Midnight Louie and his inamorata, the Divine Yvette, travel to the New England seaside town of Innsmouth to star in a cat food commercial. What’s fishy is the town itself: it’s caught in the slimy paws of a legendary monster named Cthulhu. Cthulhu is a monster-god who figures in a number of classic works by H. P. Lovecraft. The Egyptian cat god Bastet also has a cameo in Something Fishy.

The every-resourceful Louie, a twenty-pound black Tom of uncertain parentage, has been solving mysteries for many years now, mostly in his home turf of Las Vegas. With his handsome physique, his hardboiled demeanor, and his ironic view of humankind, Louie is the Bruce Willis of cats. No stranger to the streets, he's easily distracted by the smell of fish--as well as by the delicious Yvette. Yvette, a diminutive pedigreed Persian whose silver fur and sea-green eyes bewitch the lovesick Louie, turns out to have hidden talents—and she knows how to use them.

Louie shares Lovecraft’s taste for horror, but writes in his own, inimitable style. I lapped up Louie’s description of the moonlight on the sea “like a great purring shaded silver Persian cat.”

Louie’s amanuensis, Carole Nelson Douglas, is clearly one of the blessed among the catted.

Tags: cats book reviews