A cat story?
Given that The Marmalade Shore's principal characters are feline, I suppose one might reasonably suppose that this is indeed 'a cat story', if not paradigmaticaly so. Of course, other species play a role – mice, humans, the odd Alsation – but it would be fair to say that their various existences are largely peripheral to the central narrative.
Amongst the litterati, one imagines, there will be those that scoff at the concept – but more fool them. For it is patently obvious to anyone with an ounce of wit that there is a veritable lacuna of writing in this vein (sadly, one might scarcely regard it as a genre), despite the undeniable and overwhelming importance of cats to all people of taste and sensitivity the world over.
Saddened as I was by the paucity of even half-decent material on this, the most central of human concerns, I reluctantly took up my metaphorical pen and determined to set matters straight. Consider this a token, a shot across the bows of the literary establishment. A cat story – yes. A swashbuckling tale of high adventure, a comedic parody, the greatest novel ever written wherein a cat drives a modified MG Midget C-type through the Ardeche – yes, of course, check all of the above... But more than this, let it be a seed, the wellspring of a movement, a call to arms to place the cat where he or she belongs: at the very locus of twenty-first century thought.
