Review: The Meowmorphosis – Coleridge Cook

Well, why not take a well-known classic like Kafka’s Metamorphosis and rewrite it in true mash-up style so that rather than waking up one morning and finding that he’s been turned into a beetle, Gregor Samsa wakes up to find he is now a cat?

The Meowmorphosis is a strange book, for although the concept is not a little ridiculous, it makes some quite serious points and goes on to incorporate elements of Kafka’s The Trial and other works too. Its surprisingly  rather good and in addition, its a nicely produced book with some intriguing full-page illustrations to enliven what is already a fairly lively text.

This book is just one of a series of mash-up or remix novels in the Quirk Classics series.  Other titles in the series are Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, and perhaps the best title, Android Karenina.  I like to think that Kafka in particular might have rather enjoyed The Meowmorphosis and it certainly carries on his tradition of providing an oblique perspective on life and allowing his readers to see the inherent zaniness of familiar human behaviour.

Let’s look at the opening paragraph of Kafka’s original work -

As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was laying on his hard, as it were armor-plated, back and when he lifted his head a little he could see his domelike brown belly divided into stiff arched segments on top of which the bed quilt could hardly keep in position and was about to slide off completely. His numerous legs, which were pitifully thin compared to the rest of his bulk, waved helplessly before his eyes.

Coleridge Cook’s version reads -

One morning as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that he had been changed into an adorable kitten.  He lay in bed on his soft, fuzzy back and saw, as he lifted his head a little, his brown arched abdomen divided into striped bowlike sections.  His blanket, just about ready to slide off completely, could hardly stay in place as he rolled from side to side.  His legs – too many!- pitifully thin compared to the rest of his rotund circumference, pwawed helplessly before his eyes.

But the book soon departs from mere parody, and while the author retains many of the elements of Metamorphosis, he allows Gregor to find his own cat-like destiny with its own feline charm and interactions in the society of street cats – who turn out to be a definitely Kafkaesque bunch of animals.

Gregor’s family seem to accept his transformation, their main concern seeming to be the loss of his earning potential because his job as a fabric salesman had enabled him to support his parents and sister.  His mother cannot bear going into his room to look at him, but Gregor’s sister Grete takes quite easily to looking after him by feeding and grooming him and cleaning his room.  But of course, life in one room is no life for a cat and eventually on a snowy evening,  Gregor manages to escape into the city streets.

He discovers the delicacy of his sense of smell finding that when he investigates a rubbish heap he can “discern haddock from cod . . . what other creatures had visitied the alley before him, what sorts of moods they had been in and whether or not he could expect rain later this evening”. Once he has left home he finds himself not at all concerned for his family, for it is int he nature of cats to be only interested in where the next meal is coming from and where a warm spot to sleep can be found.

When he encounters the community of other cats, he finds himself in the world of Kafka’s The Trial.  He encounters the Academy of Cats is arrested and imprisoned, accused of unknown crimes, but as the investigation progresses, he finds himself more confused than ever, for his accusers seem surprisingly disinterested in finding an actual crime committed by Gregor, but more interested in a sort of universal guilt in which he has become complicit.

After a lengthy philosophical digression (over several pages) the prosecuting lawyer, (appropriately enough, a tabby called Joseph K)   declaims to the court, “He stands accused”.  Gregor responds with “Of what?  Of what am I accused”, only to hear the Academy members howl “Guilty!”.

But all is not what it seems, for in typically Kafkaesque style, it is explained to Gregor that being under arrest need not stop him from getting on with his usual life and he is free to go.  When he questions what the point was in arresting him and bringing him to trial, his accuser, a cat called Franz tells him,

No one is keeping you here, nor should anyone have a wish to.  In fact we want nothing at all from you.  We belong to the court of the cats, so why would we want anything from you? . . . but wherever you go, you will carry with you the knowledge that you are a convict, and your execution shall be just that: the execution of your respectable self as a cat of a man and its replacement with a criminal mind, a dark and sneaky place.

The thought behind this is not new – it is pure Kafka, and I was tempted to ask myself what the point of it all is.  For me, the answer is that I enjoy reading the fairly small body of Kafka’s work, and in The Meowmorphosis I was able to read more of the same and remember the pleasure of reading Metamorphosis for the first time, but with additional material from a writer who has definitely captured the essence of Kafka’s outlook on life.

There is much more to the book than these short extracts.  It is a thought provoking read and it will not be to everyone’s tastes, but I enjoyed it greatly and it will remain on my my shelves for re-reading at some point.