This time I’m going to review a short story anthology that centred around our favourite furry friend, cat! My sister bought this book years ago, and the bookstore that sells this book actually has a cat! But we didn’t get to meet them at that time. The bookshop is called BooksActually, and the physical shop is now closed, sadly, so we cannot visit them again. They went full online because of the pandemic.

From The Belly Of The Cat consists of 15 short stories, edited by Stephanie Ye, and written by mostly Singaporean, but there are few who come from other lands, yet they also have some kind of connection with Singapore. Actually, the editor received 65 submissions for this anthology project, and sadly they can only include 15 stories. 

In the book’s preface, the editor also presented us with the venn diagram of themes that appeared in people’s submissions when they were asked to write about cat stories. There are three big circles labelled with ‘lonely people’, ‘cats are supernatural’, and ‘anthropomorphised’ and they are linked with each other in that respective order. The other labels are ‘Egypt’ and ‘Schrodinger’s cat’, both are linked to the ‘lonely people’ circle; and finally, an independent circle, not linked to any of the circles above is ‘cat is cute and life is great’ label. It is interesting how all the 65 submissions somehow have similar concepts. It’s like people unconditionally agree that cats have the reputation of being cryptid and spooky.

Since it’s an anthology, I’m going to structure this review a bit differently than usual. Instead of a pros and cons section, I’m going to change it to my favourite stories section. It doesn’t mean that I don’t like those that aren’t mentioned, tho! It’s just these are the ones that vibe with my heart the most when reading, and there are a few of them.

Reading Process

Since it’s an anthology, I read it faster than usual. The stories are such a page turner; they are curated very well, ranging from a very slice-of-life-kind of story, to a very ridiculous (in a positive way) cat-zilla attacking Singapore. I wish the stories were endless. If there is ever a sequel of this anthology, I will buy it for sure.

Without further ado, let’s dive into the first story.

Robotz Attacks Teh Citeh by Joshua Ip

We’re going to open the ‘stories that vibe with me’ section with this one. To summarize, the story is about a villain named Dr. Yee who planned to attack Singapore using his sophisticated Robot with AI planted inside, and of course the government tried to put this Robot down. Turns out the Robot’s weakness was cats, and only when the government issued the Cat Welfare Society to help, the Robot could be defeated. Several hours later, they found Dr. Yee in his hideout, already dead, with only a cat present.

It’s pretty interesting, don’t you think? What vibe with me the most is that the story opened with Dr. Yee’s conversation with his ‘partner’ named Peter, talking as if he was actually conversing with a fellow human. Of course, Peter turned out to be a cat in the end.

What makes Dr. Yee’s robot different from other robots, is that his robot had a brain. An artificial one, yet it’s smart enough to mimic its owner’s line of thought: liking cats, not destroying cats, loving cats! At a glance, this ‘ability’ looks like a weakness, since the government uses cats to defeat it. Yet,

The General sighs. Below him, Doctor Yee’s metal legacy lies immobile, with several hundreds cats in various states of aristocratic repose scattered all over its torso. Its gum-spitting jaw gapes open, disused. From where the General is standing, it looks like a smile.

The Belly Of The Cat, page 138

The excerpt above is one of my favourite lines. It implies that the ‘defeat’ doesn’t feel like a defeat at all. The Robot’s smile says something along the lines of “even an inanimate thing can also love cats!”

Waiting for William by Paul Ruta

The second favourite is basically a conversation between two cats. If you are an English Literature student, perhaps the title will remind you immediately of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, and I think these two are pretty similar.

They are both structured as a ‘play’; while Waiting for Godot is a proper script, Waiting for William is made up entirely from a conversation between two cats, without any setting description or such. The only way to differentiate cat A and cat B is the way it is printed, cat A’s dialogue is in bold, while cat B’s is not.

As far as I can remember, Godot doesn’t appear at the end, does he? In Waiting for William, William comes out! William is actually a cockroach hiding behind the fridge, and the cats only found it because the fridge is broken and their owner takes them out for reparation.

I like this one particularly because the story consists only of two cats’ conversation, without any narration between them! They talk about litter box schedules, bad cat food, and at some point one of them pretends that they come from another planet, and that they will come back someday. The world revolves around these two cats only, and the way they talk about themselves represents very well on how highty-mighty cats can appear to be. It’s cute, though, since they are cats.

Feeding the Cats by Melissa Powers

I cannot miss out the ‘cat is cryptid’ agenda in this cat-centric review, so here is the third favourite story. This one is one of three stories where the protagonist doesn’t like cat, and this one stands out because of its first line:

In honour of my husband’s life, I fed the cats the day he died.

The Belly Of The Cat, page 232

Who knows that, eventually, it is revealed that the said dead husband is the meal for the cats! There is some Edgar Allan Poe shits happening here, and I am living for it.

The story opens with the line above, followed by an explanation telling us about the protagonist’s husband’s disappearance, and how the police cannot find him everywhere. It continues with the narration about how the wife’s life slowly changed because the husband brought a black cat home one evening. He named the cat Belinda.

At some point, Jocelyn, the wife, found out that she was allergic to cat fur, and that Edwin, her husband, needed to choose: the adopted stray cat, or his wife. They already attempted to let the black cat go, yet the cat came back. At the end, Edwin chose to let his Jocelyn go. Desperate of this sudden decision, the wife asked him: so what should she do, then?

Shrugging, Edwin turned to Belinda, saying over his shoulder, “You’re a great cook, Jocelyn. Why don’t you cook?”

So that’s exactly what I did. And in honour of my husband’s life, I fed the cats the day he died. […]

Belinda watched me kill Edwin, and cook him. That white meat and that dark, dark hair. The sound of the knife, sliding through him, with no significant resistance to speak of.

The Belly Of The Cat, page 242

This story gives me Poe’s The Black Cat and The Tell-Tale Heart vibes, because 1) there are two black cats yet we do not know whether they are the same cats or not, and 2) the fact that the wife eventually tell the police about his husband’s ‘disappearance’ shows that she is actually guilty of her actions, yet unlike in The Tell-Tale Heart, she doesn’t actually turn herself in.

Aside from the story, there is a small section about the writer on the last page of each story, and there’s this ‘about my relationship with cats’ section. It is exciting to read the writer’s own cats, or in some cases, their neighbour’s cat.

While I only write about three stories, it doesn’t mean that the other short stories are not as good! Each story has a very unique approach to the theme cat, and this review will be endless if I write them all. I had so much fun reading this. Very much recommended if you are in a reading slump (like me) and you want to read something light.