Feline companion beguiling, insightful

Most of the interaction in German writers J.M. Gutsch and Maxim Leo’s Frankie is between Frankie, a cat, and Richard Gold, who is grieving the death of his wife and is about to hang himself when Frankie turns up injured on his doorstep. They need each other, and become each other’s purpose in life.

As Gold soon discovers, Frankie can talk. Once Gold gets over his shock, they proceed on to many adventures.

Frankie didn’t like any of the names people gave him until old Mrs. Berkowitz adopted him. She was a great fan of Frank Sinatra, so she called the stray Frank. That name met with his approval, and one of the crooner’s well-known songs pretty much describes Frankie’s lifestyle: “I’ve lived a life that’s full/I travelled each and every highway/And more, much more than this/I did it my way.”

When talking with people, Frankie speaks “Humanish,” as opposed to the “Cattish” he uses in dealing with other animals. The advantage of “Cattish” is that it’s a universal language for cats — so, for example, a cat from Germany can talk with a cat from Sweden and no translation is required.

(Gutsch and Leo’s book is translated from German to English by Sharon Howe.)

“Humanish is dead easy… A lot of animals at the shelter spoke Humanish,” Frankie notes.

Frankie is also a source of caustic observations about society, starting with television. “Films with humans in them are boring. Whenever you see humans on TV, they’re nearly always doing the same thing: beating up other humans… Why? I don’t know. They don’t even eat their kill,” he observes.

In a more general observation on consumer society, Frankie notes “Humans are civilized, whereas we animals aren’t. And to be civilized, you need a whole lot of stuff so you can impress other people and show everyone just how civilized you are.”

Despite his cleverness, Frankie, like many people, sometimes misses the obvious, or misinterprets it. When he first sees Gold standing on a chair with a rope around his neck, for example, he thinks Gold is just playing with string.

And then there’s Mrs. Berkowitz, who “(l)ay down abruptly in the garden and two men arrived soon after — all in white — bundling her into a big car with flashing lights on the roof. I never saw her again after that.”

Frankie asks Gold about his wife, who died in a car crash. Gold says she’s now in heaven, pointing to the sky. To Frankie, though “The idea of a human flying around up there strikes me as highly unlikely.”

Gold says she is with God, “if there is a God,” later explaining to Frankie that “Heaven isn’t an actual place, It’s more of a metaphor. And the dead person’s soul goes up to heaven. And then it’s with God.”

Gold tells Frankie he has a soul, too. To Frankie, while it’s very complicated, “(i)t sounds like it’s still good to have a soul, though, just in case.” Of heaven, Frankie thinks “It must be chaos up there! But there is something wonderful about it all the same.”

A good portion of the book is given over to shredding the phoniness of Hollywood and marketers, while Frankie winds up starring in a cat food commercial.

Ar first glance it’s tempting to see this book as a pale imitation of The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa, published a few years ago in Japan.

But on careful reading, there’s no doubt Frankie is his own cat doing it his way.

Gordon Arnold is a Winnipeg author.