Manfried Saves the Day

The few times I encountered Manfried the Man on Facebook left me with a feeling of amusement mixed with the uncomfortable feeling of how I don't want to see naked men being owned by cats .... although the very idea was full of hilarious potential. Doubly so when the men (no women?) here says “hey” (rather than “meow”).

Manfried's owner Steve Catson has a job making comics and a girlfriend Henrietta Catface who runs the local man shelter. Things were looking rosy, until a fat cat arrives in the neighbourhood wanting to develop the area, including the land where the man shelter is. Henrietta refuses his offer to relocate. She and her friends enter their men into the Manflower Show, aiming for the prize money to buy the land so they won't be run out. Meanwhile, Manfried struggles with having to share his home with a new stray man named Garfield.

To be honest, the man antics (man-tics?) on the side were more interesting than the cat drama carrying the story forward. Maybe older people like me are prone to rolling our eyes when asked to choose between work and helping the friend/SO's cause; not the kind of thing I want to think about when I just want to LOL at a chubby man trying to one-up a younger competitor while hey-ying for attention.

Perhaps what this comic succeeds in doing is making me think about how we treat our animal companions and vice versa in a “Things that your cat does that would be creepy if you did it” way, or “things we do to cats that we won't do to people”.

ARC courtesy of NetGalley.