Book Club #2 - Leonard

Growing up, I would often watch a movie titled The Cat from Outer Space. It’s a charming comedy film from 1978, featuring an alien who just so happens to look and act like an Earth cat. I quite enjoy this film. It’s a comedy first and doesn’t try to take itself seriously. My love for this film was what made me interested in reading Leonard (My Life as a Cat) by Carlie Sorosiak - specifically listening to the audiobook version narrated by Jeffrey Kafer. At a surface-level, these two pieces of media feel very similar - after all, they are both about aliens who end up on Earth and are recognized as cats. However, there is a lot that separates them to give Leonard its own identity.

Let’s talk about the titular Leonard, shall we? Leonard is the most adorable narrator who cannot be any more clueless about human interaction and humor. This ironically makes him more charismatic and hilarious, especially when making knock-knock jokes. He has quite a lot of personality for being a part of a hive mind of non-material beings. Speaking of which, Leonard’s original mission was to become park ranger in Yellowstone and inspect the happenings on Earth. However, when thinking of jokes he might tell after becoming human, he becomes distracted and starts to become a cat. Honestly, the better of the two options, if you ask me.

So, Leonard is a cat. How does a cat communicate? With purrs, meows, and mews. Thus, he has no means to get help and get back home to his hive mind… or does he? While reluctant to ask for help at first¹, he eventually uses a laptop to type out that he is not of this world. Honestly, how much cuter can you make an alien cat communicate with humans?

It’s also something you really could only do in a novel. The Cat from Outer Space instead uses a translation collar to let the alien cat speak with humans. This helps ensure the audience can always understand the cat, especially in action scenes. Typing is much easier to convey in a text-based medium and doesn’t slow down the story. And even when Leonard isn’t using the computer, you’ll never stop hearing his thoughts. Still, I can never have enough of Leonard using his kitty paws to type out messages. It would be great if I could teach my cat to type.

I think that the ending is what really made the book go from good to great. You have the middle section that’s half slice-of-life and half road trip, but then you get to Yellowstone where Leonard needs to book it to get to the geyser on time. Oh yeah, did I not mention that the way Leonard goes back to the hive mind is by being shot up in the geyser? How traumatic would that be for any tourists there, regardless of whether Leonard was a cat or a human.

So, Leonard, should he go back to the hive mind, will not remember any emotions he felt down on Earth. That’s the sacrifice he needs to make to be back home and become immortal again. That is absolutely heartbreaking given how so much of the book is dedicated to the emotional connections he makes with the various characters like Olive, Norma, and Q. I didn’t really talk about them in this post, but they have quite a lot of depth that I suppose you’ll have to learn more about by reading the book (if you haven’t already, I generally assume you have if you made it this far - or just don’t care about spoilers, I suppose).

I think this aspect is where Leonard shines over The Cat from Outer Space. There’s a compelling reason why Leonard would choose to stay on Earth. Sure, you could say the hive mind is his family and that he’d want to go back, but through all his journeys, he has formed much stronger bonds with this family than he ever has with the hive mind. In The Cat from Outer Space, it’s not entirely clear why he’d want to stay on Earth² (and become an American citizen of all things), other than maybe to chill with the girl cat he meets near the end.

When Leonard was reaching its climax, I was tearing up. I’m glad the author gave Leonard autonomy over whether he should stay on Earth. It certainly would have felt cheap if Leonard just missed the window and was like, “whelp, guess I’m staying here now.” Leonard chose for himself that it was worth being mortal so he could spend time with his new family, and I think that’s beautiful. In spite of not being in a human body like he originally wanted to be, Leonard learned more about being human while being a cat than he ever would have as a real boy.

Next month, I’ll be covering Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes. Feel free to read it for yourself before I cover it in that blog post. See you then!