The Cat's Meow, Gary Soto

The Cat's Meow is a strange story. I've never read one so strange. It is about a little girl who hears her cat talk in Spanish. When she asks the cat how she learned to speak, she tells her that a man on another street taught her. The weirdest part about it is it's all true. It just seems weird to me.

It does seem to parody parents and the way kids see their parents. In the story Graciela, the main character, thinks her parents are so weird. She sees them smear ice cream all over themselves and say funny things (her dad keeps saying, "When I was a little girl"). Her parents never seem to listen to Graciela. When she asks them questions they respond with answers that have nothing to do with the question. They also don't notice when she is gone. She just hangs her sweater on the bush in their front yard and they think she is there. It seems like the story is told through the little girl's eyes, so everything that happens is according to her imagination. Perhaps the talking cat, the weird answers, and all the other crazy things that happen in the story are just part of Graciela's imagination and her perspective on the world. At any rate, this book was quite strange.