by Danica Gim From Danica Gim — Dutch poet and illustrator with 245,000 Instagram followers, whose Art Nouveau and ancient black-figure-influenced illustrations of women and their worlds have been reposted by Britney Spears, Dove Cameron, and Doutzen Kroes, and whose woman-centered illustrated poetry is credited with inspiring a new wave of illustration style across social media. This is a 224-page square-format illustrated book — 7.5 × 7.5 inches, built for display as much as reading — in which a cat speaks. Not metaphorically. In voice: deadpan, occasionally imperious, frequently funnier than expected, and somehow exactly right. The cat offers encouragement when you need it, commentary on your questionable decisions, and the particular variety of wisdom that only a creature who sleeps seventeen hours a day and judges the rest can offer. But underneath the humor — and this is what makes the book something more than a charming cat-owner gift — is something genuinely tender. The book acknowledges that our wonderful cats can't be with us forever, and Gim draws that acknowledgment honestly: there are angel cat illustrations, and the presence of grief in the margins of celebration. One reader teared up. Another called it "almost a keepsake." The funny banter and the ache coexist on the same page, the way they do in real life with animals you love — and that combination is what gives this book its emotional weight beyond the genre. Gim's black-figure illustration style — spare, mythological, quietly luminous — renders the cat not as a cartoon mascot but as a presence. The art carries the same hand that made her self-discovery journals and her poetry prints; the same European aesthetic lineage, the same attention to what a line can hold. The square format means it sits open on a coffee table, a nightstand, a desk, somewhere it can be returned to rather than shelved. Perfect for: -Cat owners who want a book that captures what it actually feels like to love a cat — the humor, the wisdom, the irrational devotion, and the awareness that they won't be here forever -Anyone who has lost a cat and wants something that holds both the grief and the joy without being maudlin about either -Gift-seekers looking for something with genuine emotional depth and visual beauty for the cat lover in their life — not a novelty item, but a keepsake -Fans of Gim's illustration style from Instagram who want her art in a physical, displayable format that isn't a journal or a print -Readers drawn to books in the tradition of I Could Pee on This by Francesco Marciuliano or The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa — but with Gim's distinctive illustrated art at the center and a more personal, emotionally layered register
