#citcop

[blimbo-buddy]

Read some preview pages for Cats in the City of Plague and I really like Esprit a lot. Everybody is so fucking mean to him

[monki-donki]

DISEÑOS DE CATS IN THE CITY OF PLAGUE

Pt. 1: Esprit

(No le sé a los gatos gordos 😭)

Empezando con el más icónico 🗣️

[blimbo-buddy]

God, please don't let Leander be GreyWing 2, please

Please for the love of god, shut the fuck up Leander. "But he believed he was right (...) It was not proper for a male cat to say he was afraid, even if he was afraid" I can't read Leander as being anything but an old cat who holds traditional values

[blimbo-buddy]

I have to reread citcop but I like how the book doesn’t pull the whole “cats belong out in the wild please don’t question why the local bird population has dwindled” schtick common in popular cat xenofiction and the entire culture of these cats is based on being with humans and how they need to follow in the paw steps of “Le Chat” (the deity the cats worship)

[blimbo-buddy]

Cats in the City of Plague: Final Thoughts

I enjoyed this book quite a bit! It's nice to break away from Warrior Cats to read other xenofiction books, seeing as this is A.L Marlow's first fiction book, I'd say it's a great start! So let's go over what I think the pros and cons of the book are: Spoilers ahead, proceed with caution

Some quick content/trigger warnings:

Self mutilation and harm (Via the group of Flagellants, who scourge themselves with whips that have sharp metal spikes to lash their own backs with. It goes into detail about their wounds)

Religious manipulation

Animal death/harm (One of the cats killed is a child as well)

If there's any other warning that I may have missed, let me know and I'll add it

Pros:

Short and sweet. It's only around 130 pages long, it's not an incredibly intimidating read so it's good for those who want to read a good beginner book that isn't Warrior Cats

Neat setting, it takes place in 14th century France

Simple but effective descriptions of locations. Marlow's descriptions for some of the settings within chapters is well executed, the strongest ones in my opinion is when the cats are going to see the Flagellates and when the cats are in the graveyard

The deaths actually have some sort of impact on the characters

Innocent. Read the book to read about Innocent.

The characters have pretty good, fleshed out personalities, well, as much as Marlow could fit into a short 16 chapter book

The world building is simple and very casual, nothing is really that complicated. It's very down-to-earth, as down-to-earth as a xenofiction book can get

The characters have small details that give them so much to work with, such as one of the servants having scars on her face from previously dealing with cow pox, it makes you wonder what she went through and adds just even a little bit of layer to her

The book actually focuses on the humans too, it's not just focused on the cats 24/7

The scenes of cats running around while everybody is trying to catch them is greatly written, Marlow can capture chaos in the text well

The book doesn't act like the forest is where every cat must belong to, it actually details how harsh the environment is

The ending epilogue was so fucking sweet, genuinely great

Cons:

It sort of rushes towards the end

Way too many fake out deaths. I think some of them should have either died right there or have their fates unknown

This is just super common in xenofiction: More male characters compared to female characters

The chapters get. Way too short towards the end. So it's bad that there's a chapter that's only about Leander, Innocent, and Jean about to fight each other because there was a female cat nearby in heat, so Juno had to go find her and kick her ass. This goes nowhere.

Leander should have gotten humbled more I'm sorry, Lavinia should have kicked his ass

While the character deaths do impact the others, I wish it impacted them more. Leander kind of forgets about Argent two chapters after he dies

I do think the book could have been a bit longer

The story of Le Chat was a bit underwhelming as much as I enjoyed it a bit

Would I recommend the book? Yeah! If you want a short read and something different, I'd recommend it. For his first fiction novel, A.L Marlow did pretty well. It obviously has its flaws, and I advise that you don't go into this book expecting something grand with lots of world building, it's a quaint world and a simple plot with neatly packed world building both based on fiction and reality (what with the plague and all).

If you want other cat xenofiction books to read, here's a Tumblr post compiling some of them, it's how I found this book to begin with!

[blimbo-buddy]

THERE'S A HUMAN CHARACTER NAMED HENRI, HENRY WARRIOR CATS NATION WE STAY WINNING

[blimbo-buddy]

Cats in the City of Plague book just came in today, I'll probably do a live read of it this weekend or today if I'm not too busy

[blimbo-buddy]

cats in the city of plague spoilers

If citcop was an older book adapted into an animated movie then there'd be so many youtube videos titled "The DARKEST animated cat movie?!: Cats in the City of Plague" or "A movie SCARIER than WATERSHIP DOWN?" and the thumbnail would be either A: Innocent's fakeout death B: A compiled photo of dark scenes or C: Argent's death scene of him burning alive

[blimbo-buddy]

I'm being completely serious, your enjoyment of Leander and/or Eusebius and/or their rivalry *can* improve if you read them both as being old men. Bonus points if you read them as divorced, bitter old men who clearly ended their relationship on a bad note and Eusebius still isn't over it

[blimbo-buddy]

Should I read the cat plague city book

If you want a short and nice story that isn't an intimidating read (with the book length, world building of the cats, etc.) Then I'd recommend it! The human characters have a good amount of personality and character to them too. Here's my final thoughts on the book if you're interested, also contains some content warnings for it

[blimbo-buddy]

I hate how I feel like I forgot something super specific in my thoughts about Cats in the city of Plague. I swear I just fucking had it and now I can't remember what it exactly was

[blimbo-buddy]

Chapter 12 thoughts

I literally have nothing I'm pretty sure this is the shortest chapter

Eusebius's group gets attacked by pigs and Eusebius gets the tip of his tail bitten off

[blimbo-buddy]

Chapter 7 thoughts

The gang finds themselves in the cathedral's crypt and nobody is having a good time. We got Lavinia, Leander, Eusebius, Jean, Reine, Innocent, Mars, and Juno… and what about the others?

ESPRIT MIGHT BE FUCKING DEAD. Fuck the world

But… anyways, Lavinia tells Leander to shut the fuck up when he gets anxious about how he's done nothing improper to deserve this treatment. Starting to think Leander is a people pleaser or something because his need to be proper every single second is not normal

Anyways, new characters! Vergil and Chaton. Adding them to my list of characters to design

Neat to see a physically disabled character with Chaton, I just hope the author doesn't get ableist with him

So Chaton is actually a stray and everybody besides Vergil reacts harshly to this and I appreciate Vergil going "Shut up we're all strays now at this point" only to then get everybody even more pissed. Tell em, Vergil

Vergil backstory time now: He used to live with this (I think rich) rich old dude and he loved his life until a bunch of guards came in shouting at him. The rich old guy was talking to them until one of the guards noticed Vergil and tried to grab him. The struggle of dodging the guard ended up lighting a bunch of papers on fire from a candle and burnt the guard's face.

Neat little backstory, and also we get an introduction to where cats of the other side of the city go to meet which is a cemetery so that's pretty neat

Chilling part is when Vergil describes how he heard many voices of cats within a sack crying out for help after they were captured by the two humans. I assume this is how Esprit was captured and presumably killed

I fucking love how Innocent's voice is described, you think he'd had this scary gruff voice but he's said to have a high pitched and almost dream-like voice. Woah boy I gotta start looking for voice claims now

[blimbo-buddy]

Chapter 5 thoughts

So Leander might just be a bit traumatized, but he's too busy being a "proper mannered cat" to care I guess (This dude's obsession with being proper makes it difficult to not think he's old)

Funny moment was when Louis (the apothecary) told Pierre to grab his tools and climb the fucking wall

Side note: I like Pierre and the apothecary's apprentice and mentor writing. It genuinely seems like the apothecary cares for Pierre

Return of Reine once more. Her description confuses me, first she's implied to be a tortoiseshell and now she's a tabby? Is she a torbie?

Not as big as a post because this chapter didn't have much going for it besides dead people and that weird rat death

[blimbo-buddy]

why are they setting cats on fire what the hell are you reading ..

It's called Cats in the City of Plague (citcop for short) by A.L Marlow. Basically it's set in 14th century Europe and is about a group of cats who are blamed for the plague which leads to the citizens killing a bunch of cats, it also involves those groups of flagellates who would go and preach that everybody needed to repent and punish themselves and also kill the "familiars of satan" which includes cats. That's how we got to the... y'know (gesturing towards chapter 4). It's a relatively short book, 140 pages and 16 chapters, but a good read so far

[blimbo-buddy]