She had eyes that were “remarkable for their deep amber colour, as well as for their enormous size and proportion to her head”. Keen to communicate with her in a profound sense, Carr closed his eyes, and “reopened them several times, the slow blink of friendship”. Emboldened that Masha “seemed receptive”, he then did what anyone might in his position: he adopted her – for Masha is a cat – and took her home with him, where they’d spend the next 17 years, hunkered down together, inseparable.
“If you are tempted to use such a phrase as just a cat,” the author warns early in his new memoir, “I can only hope that you read on and discover not only that she ruled her untamed world, but brought life-affirming purpose to my own.” Throughout the 352 pages of My Beloved Monster, Carr, an American crime writer and military historian who died earlier this year from cancer aged 68, sets out what may be the most effusive paean to cat love ever committed to paper.
