Cats do cure problems. Even if you're allergic.

 

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Excellent timing for me to read Syou Ishida's We'll Prescribe You a Cat; I had to say goodbye to my second cat at the end of last year and a few weeks ago, my husband and I adopted a mother and kitten (who are now sleeping, piled up in a hammock next to the couch). Cats are special.

 

In Kyoto, a handful of people find themselves at a clinic that treats the soul that they heard about from a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-coworker's-brother's-cousin. Once there, the taciturn nurse and friendly-if-possibly-a-bit-vacant doctor prescribe each a cat. (One of my favorite bits of the book are the directions that come with the cats.) (Also the zoomies description.) Naturally, each person finds their life upended in small or large ways by the cat.

Is there magical realism? You better believe it.

The book is charming. The characters aren't necessarily likeable--even with the additions of the cats they're prescribed--but they are real. I was particularly moved by the young girl trying to deal with cliques at school and her mother. I also liked that not everyone wound up keeping their cats, which I didn't expect; I appreciated it being handled differently for each of the characters.

I kind of feel like I either wanted all of the characters somehow related, or none of them, and I could've done without the ending of the book. I liked what the geisha's story was trying to convey, but I didn't love that story itself. I wanted it to be left more ambiguously. Ah well.

They're all good cats.