Rhamah Norris "Cats"

This story takes place at an animal shelter specifically designed to take in and take care of cats until they can find a new home. The narrator of this piece is an employee and is charged with maintaining the floor and the appearance of the cats. While I initially assumed the narrator would be the protagonist of this story, I found it hard to justify this by the end. Instead of immediately negating the legitimacy of the story as a whole, however, I reread the story from the perspective that Lily the cat was the protagonist. She is the only cat given a name, and a fair amount of time is spent describing her personality, past, and actions. If this is indeed the intended focus of the story, I enjoy it for its originality and creativity. I might suggest a little more emphasis be put on Lily throughout the piece so it is more obvious what is being done, but all in all I like the concept.

            The change I saw in Lily was pretty straightforward: she pretends to be docile and deserving of a home, but in the end lashes out at the hand that was about to take her. In a weird way, I kind of saw this as a kind of exacting of justice on the cat’s part. For the short amount of time she has been at the shelter, she had been neglected and passed over by many people simply because of her missing eye. Maybe this was her way of sticking it to the man. Or boy. I really enjoyed some of your descriptions. One that stood out to me in particular was the line that read “as arms unaccustomed to holding an animal cradle her close.” This was a great picture of little children holding cats in the awkward way that they do and made the description very believable.

            My primary suggestion for this piece would be to make it a little more clear what the story is about. If it is about Lily, perhaps give a little more insight into her background or daily routine. All in all though, a well done piece.