Kittens and Existential Angst

“One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that he had been changed into an adorable kitten.” If that sounds vaguely familiar, it should: It’s roughly the beginning of Franz Kafka’s best-known work, The Metamorphosis. Only this time around, it’s not giant bugs that take center stage, it’s giant kittens: The Meowmorphosis is a brand-new spoof novel coming soon from the pseudonym known as Coleridge Cook. Here’s the publisher’s notes from Amazon.com: “Meet Gregor Samsa, a humble young man who works as a fabric salesman to support his parents and sister. His life goes strangely awry when he wakes up late for work and discovers that, inexplicably, he is now a man-sized baby kitten. His family freaks out: Yes, their son is OMG so cute, but what good is cute when there are bills to pay? And how can Gregor be so selfish as to devote all his attention to a scrap of ribbon? As his new feline identity threatens to eat away at his personality, Gregor desperately tries to survive this bizarre, bewhiskered ordeal by accomplishing the one thing he never could as a man: He must flee his parents’ house.” The Meowmorphosis comes to bookshelves this May, in paperback from Quirk Books.