Recommended by David Sedaris

The musings of an indoor cat who was born on the streets. Penny understands her humans' words, though they have no idea. She sometimes wishes for more than her circumscribed, indoor life, but usually concludes that warmth, shelter, food and water are all she truly needs. She also has epic freak-outs inspired by catnip or the vacuum cleaner.

Wry and entertaining. The art is realistic, rather than cartoonish or stylized. The author, of course, has cats. ( )

Penny by Karl Stevens is an interesting graphic novel about a very philosophical cat.

This book was a little dull for me, but the illustrations were incredible. Penny was a stray kitten on the street who was picked up, "kidnapped", and adopted by a couple. They bring Penny home and the cat begins to think about everything philosophical about a cat, existence and life itself. The cat is sassy, intelligent and has an intriguing story.

I thought this book might be funnier or a bit more engaging than it was. I found it very slow to get through but I really like cats and graphic novels and I really wanted to finish it.

Overall, this is a good book but it wasn't fast enough or funny enough for me. It was advertised as a comedy on NetGalley which is why I was excited for it.

Three out of five stars.

Thank you to NetGalley and Chronicle Books for providing me a free copy of this book in exchange of an honest review. ( )

i actually really, really liked the art here. i feel like any cat lover can picture this adorable cat being adorable just the way he wanted us to. i am partial to realistic art, and he does a great job with this, i feel like. i suspect that he and his wife look exactly as he drew them, and personally i love this, and his cute kitty. his cat does things most cats do, and we can picture our cats doing the same thing, or relate to them having done those things, so it's really pandering to the cat-lover in the reader. the words were fine. it was funny, or at least parts of it were. it reminded me a lot of henri the philosophical cat from ages ago, but i feel like henri did it first and better. (it could be just my memory of the videos, but even if he didn't do it better, certainly he did it first, and i'm not sure this added much to the conversation.) still, it was enjoyable and fun to look at. i want to pet penny. ( )

Worst Garfield collection yet. Odie doesn't show up at all!

Mostly the book consists of one-page gags with the cat waxing philosophical for several panels and then offering a haiku-like twist that hews closer to its animal nature. That repetition actually gets pretty darn old pretty darn fast. There are around four multi-page sequences that offer small adventures to break up the monotony -- running away from home, owners on vacation, moving household, pet-sitting a bird -- but they are very brief and it's right back to the formula. It's well drawn at least.

Probably best read a few pages at a time and by someone who really likes cats a lot. ( )