4 Wildly Different Books Every Cat Lover Should Read

From a magical talking Persian to a hard-boiled feline detective, one that's... not for the kids, and a very good stray who brings a whole neighborhood together

Give me a book with a good cat character in it, and I will find a way to talk about it for twenty minutes. It doesn't matter the genre, fantasy, mystery, romance, it really doesn't matter. If there's a cat with an actual personality on the page, I'm in.

Right now I'm making my way through the audiobooks of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series, and I've laughed out loud so many times at Princess Donut. That got me thinking about a few other books I’ve read that also happen to feature unforgettable cats, for completely different reasons. So here are four wildly different books, united by one very good cat each.

1. Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman, for the reader who wants their cat to have main character energy.

The premise alone is a lot: an alien corporation has stripped Earth for parts, and the handful of survivors are forced into an 18-level dungeon crawl that's broadcast across the galaxy as a reality show. Our hero, Carl, enters the dungeon in his boxers with no shoes. His sidekick is Princess Donut, a prize-winning Persian show cat who belonged to his ex-girlfriend. She couldn't originally talk, but becomes fully sentient (and magical) after eating an enchanted pet treat early on.

What follows is somehow one of the funniest character arcs in recent fantasy. Donut is dramatic, vain, deeply food-motivated, and constantly torn between her new life as a battle-hardened dungeon crawler and her old identity as a pageant champion, and she is completely unbothered by the contradiction. If you listen to the audiobook, narrator Jeff Hays' voice for her has become such a fan favorite that he's set to reprise the role in the TV adaptation, currently in development. She's chaos, she's comic relief, and somehow also one of the most emotionally grounding characters in the whole series.

2. Felidae by Akif Pirinçci, for the reader who wants their cat to solve a murder

This one's a hard swerve into noir. Felidae is a dark, atmospheric detective novel narrated entirely from the point of view of Francis, a house cat who moves into a new home with his owner and almost immediately discovers a mutilated cat corpse next door. What follows is a properly tense murder mystery. Francis investigates a string of killings targeting cats in the neighborhood, all while navigating his own unsettling dreams that seem to hold clues.

It's dark, and there are moments that are legitimately unsettling, but it's also very funny, largely because Pirinçci (writing in German) never lets you forget you're seeing the entire human world through a cat's eyes. My favorite running bit: cats in this book refer to their humans as "can openers," which, if you live with a cat, you already know is uncomfortably accurate. It was a bestseller in Germany, and it's still one of the strangest, most memorable "detective" novels I've ever read.

I actually read this one in the original German, in my late teens in the 90s, and it's one of those books that just stuck with me ever since. Unfortunately, it's out of print here in the US. The English translation was published back in the 90s too (look for the Dutton or Ballantine editions), and new copies aren't really available anymore. Your best bet is a used copy through somewhere like Thriftbooks or AbeBooks, or borrowing it digitally through Archive.org. Worth the hunt, but budget a little extra time to actually get your hands on it.

3. Lights Out by Navessa Allen, for the reader who wants their cat with a side of "read the trigger warnings first"

Quick disclaimer before I say anything else: this one is a dark romance with very explicit, “spicy” content. Think knife play, kink, stalking themes, and morally gray characters doing morally gray things. It is not a book for everyone, and if any of that isn't your thing, this is the one book on this list to skip. Please check the content and trigger warnings before picking it up.

That said, buried in all that intensity is one of my favorite fictional cat dynamics in recent memory. Fred is Aly's cat to begin with, but somewhere along the way Josh starts thinking of him as his too, and watching this morally complicated, intense character go soft over a cat that isn't even his is one of the most charming threads in the whole story. His interactions with Fred, and the way the cat quietly becomes part of his and Aly's world together, are some of the only unambiguously sweet moments in an otherwise very dark book.

4. Cat's People by Tanya Guerrero, for the reader who wants their cat to bring out the best in total strangers

I'm almost through this one, and it might be the most feel-good pick on this whole list. It follows a stray cat, fittingly named Cat, who's become a fixture on one Brooklyn block, looked after by a handful of neighbors who don't have much reason to interact with each other otherwise. A couple of them have quietly been leaving each other notes for a while, without ever really meeting, and when Cat falls sick, it's what finally pulls the whole group together. I don't want to say much more than that, since watching it come together is half the fun, but if you want your cat book with less murder and more found family, this is the one. A fun personal note: two of the five main human characters happen to share first names with my own kids, which was so cool to discover while reading.

So, four books, four completely different cats

A magical diva, a hard-boiled detective, a scene-stealing rescue cat living his best life in the middle of a dark romance, and a scrappy street cat who brought a whole neighborhood together. If you've got a favorite fictional cat we didn't mention, we want to hear about it. Reply to this post or find us on socials and tell us who we're missing. 🐾