Feline figures as frightening, furry muse

With his latest novel, Look What the Cat Dragged In, Philadelphia-based Jason Rekulak puts a cosy horror bent to some of the illustrated tricks he used in his previous bestselling novel, Hidden Pictures.

Penny Padgett, a cartoonist living in Philadelphia with her boyfriend, loves her cat. Her fans also love her cat, Popcorn, since she is the basis for Penny’s bestselling books.

But when Popcorn escapes the house through an open window during a snowstorm, Penny is left not only heartbroken but creatively hollowed out — and the deadline for her latest book is approaching fast.

To help break her out of her depressed funk, her boyfriend Dean convinces Penny to come with him to a party hosted by one of his extremely wealthy clients. While at the mansion, Penny bonds instantly with the client’s cat, Godfrey, and soon the couple agree to cat-sit Godfrey while the wealthy client is away.

Odd things begin to happen once Godfrey is in their house: he can only eat specially prepared baggies of raw meat, blood and viscera; he brings home bigger and bigger bits of creatures that he’s attacked outside; and Penny starts to hear strange music at night, though she can’t tell if it’s coming from inside the house or from their neighbours’ place.

One good thing that happens once Godfrey arrives is that Penny finds herself able to work again, often drawing in a flow state for hours on end. But her cartoons start to turn dark, and she can’t remember drawing them anymore.

Rekulak’s previous and bestselling horror novel Hidden Pictures featured illustrations throughout, showcasing the increasingly sinister drawings of a little boy under the charge of that novel’s protagonist. Rekulak uses illustrations again here, and the same illustrators, Doogie Horner and Will Staehle, in Look What the Cat Dragged In. This time, the illustrations feature Penny’s cartoons as well as elaborate woodcuts by Barnabas Godfrey, an eccentric and extremely wealthy artist whose descendant is the wealthy client to whom Godfrey the cat belongs.

Similarly to Hidden Pictures, the illustrations in Look What the Cat Dragged In grow more mysterious and sinister as the novel progresses. The images are impressive — the cartoons are bubbly and fun, and the woodcuts (a gothic style popular in the 18th and 19th centuries) gorgeously grim.

They serve as useful visualizations of what is described in the text of the novel itself, but it would have been interesting if the images were allowed to do more of the storytelling on their own.

As Penny descends into madness and her illustrations become stranger and stranger, the novel describes exactly how they’re changing and who is seeing them; it would have perhaps been more effective if the reader could have just seen the images, without so much explanation, and be left with this window into Penny’s deteriorating state.

While not directly mentioned, the novel’s narrative borrows liberally from horror classic Rosemary’s Baby. This doesn’t detract from the novel exactly, but readers or viewers who know that story will be able to spot where this novel is heading pretty early on.

While there are some moments of gore and gruesomeness, Look What the Cat Dragged In is a relatively cosy and fun horror, sure to appeal to fans of Stranger Things or Fear Street.

Cat lovers with a taste for darker stories will also find lots to love here.

Keith Cadieux is a Winnipeg writer and editor. His latest story collection, Donner Parties and Other Anti-Social Gatherings, is out now and was named one of the Best Books of 2024 by the Free Press. He also co-edited the horror anthology What Draws Us Near.