Woe: A Housecat's Story of Despair
Lucy Knisley conveys love for a pet the best way she knows how: through cute, enjoyable comics.
Woe: A Housecat’s Story of Despair
By Lucy Knisley
Published by RH Graphic
Out on July 2, 2024
Buy it
I first encountered Lucy Knisley’s work through comics she posted online way back in the late Oughts, and I loved her expressive, cartoony style. She’s gone on to publish multiple non-fiction comics covering topics such as her relationship with food, her wedding, and her pregnancy, as well as some graphic novels for children. It’s been a pleasure to see her career develop and watch her continued success.
Knisley has a great sense of how to convey information through comics. Her artwork is deceptively simple, using the “clear line” style to outline figures while giving them realistic postures and gestures and making sure their facial expressions convey exactly the right emotions. It’s work that’s clearly based on years of practice, and she’s able to capture the full range of human expression. In much of her work, she has also filled pages with gorgeous details, situating her characters in rich, tactile settings and using excellent panel-to-panel storytelling to keep stories flowing across the pages. She uses color beautifully, whether it’s the lovely greenery of pastoral settings or the appealing tan of fresh-baked bread.
However, she can also tell nice, simple stories by dialing back the detail and focusing on specific moments, while also exaggerating certain aspects for comedic effect. That’s what she does in her latest book, which is actually a collection of comics she originally posted online featuring her cat, Linney. Reflecting the format of Instagram, the book features square pages, typically with white backgrounds and free-floating sequences of images following various feline exploits and seeing Knisley, her husband, and their toddler interacting with their beloved pet.
It’s all very cute and fun, with depictions of Linney lazing around the house, sometimes being irritating but also cuddling up with the family and being a lovable ball of fur. Knisley abstracts the depiction of Linney, mostly depicting her as an orange lump, and she follows suit with much of the rest of the art, using blank colored ovals as the backgrounds of panels and blurring the color separations to give everything a rougher feel. It suits the tossed-off style of these comics, which have the air of observations and jokes that had to be quickly captured and posted on social media.
Knisley also has a lot of fun with varying depictions of Linney. Sometimes, she seems like a normal housecat who does stuff like knock glasses of water onto people while they’re sleeping, struggle for freedom after being picked up, and run away from the grasping hands of a toddler to hide in a closet. But Knisley also anthropomorphizes Linney, giving her flowery dialogue that conveys the haughty attitude that cats seem to have. It’s pretty hilarious, with lines like, “Desist, woman! Leave me to my solitary contemplations, for once!”
I especially enjoyed Linney’s interactions with a Flora, a puppy who sometimes visits and is very friendly and highly energetic. She gets in Linney’s business, causing no end of misery for the cat. Knisley depicts Linney as being extremely offended by these affronts, saying things such as, “I loathe the very air you breathe, you ham-smelling carbuncle!” But it seems that she eventually acquiesces, or at least refuses to cede territory, accepting that she’s going to have to share space with this beast.
As the book progresses, Linney gets older and starts nearing the end of her life, as pets do. The family has to deal with increasingly complex medical needs, and they begin preparing for when their beloved cat will no longer be with them. In addition to being a collection of cute moments, the comics seem to be Knisley’s way of remembering her relationship with a creature that was a member of her family for many years. It ends up being pretty emotionally affecting, relatable to anybody who has had to put down a pet. But the book as a whole is a great depiction of why the animals that we welcome into our homes mean so much to us and why we keep them around even if we know that our relationships with them are going to end before we’re ready.
Compared to Knisley’s other books, this seems kind of slight, but it’s still full of fun moments while capturing what makes pets in general and cats specifically so appealing to keep around. Her work seems effortless, as if she’s just sketched out some daily observations, but that’s just how they appear on the surface. I suspect a good deal of thought went into them, whether it involved laboring over the best way to capture the essence of Linney or crafting dialogue that conveyed her attitudes toward life. It ends up being a beautiful portrait of a life well lived and a great demonstration of the love that families build with their pets. Cat lovers shouldn’t miss it.