Louvre no Neko / Cats of the Louvre by Matsumoto Taiyo

In my quest to read every manga ever written about cats, I picked up Cats of the Louvre at my local library. Buckle your seatbelts, gentle reader. This is one weird-ass story.

SPOILERS

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The story starts by following Cécile a docent at the Louvre, who is TIRED of showing off the Mona Lisa when there are so many more interesting paintings and fielding the exact same questions day in and day out.

One day, she notices a little white cat following along.

Who then seems to disappear.

The second human character we follow is Patrick who joins the evening shift at the Louvre. He’s paired with a strange old man, Marcel, as a kind of mentor. Marcel is the kind of guy who mumbles to himself a lot and asks Patrick if the painting ever talk to him. Patrick, for what its worth, rolls with Marcel… and the fact that the first thing Marcel teaches Patrick to do is feed the cats living in the attic.

So far, so good. We find out that Marcel basically grew up in the Louvre with his sister, a sister that’s gone missing. He claims she refused to age, grew weak, and then, one day, disappeared into a painting, though he’s not sure which one.

Of course, no one believes this crazy old man.

Cut to the little white cat, known as Snow Bébé. In the strangest part of the manga, we discover that on the full moon, the cats of the Louvre take on human shape (mostly.) In these scenes we discover that Snow Bébé definitely hears the paintings and isn’t aging like a normal cat. Also, when Snow Bébé gets chased by some kids who manage to stay behind after the museum is closes, we learn that Snow Bébé has the ability to disappear into the pictures, as well.

The rest of the manga involves Cécile, Marcel, and Patrick solving the mystery of what happened to Marcel’s sister. A sister he’s been waiting for all these years. She’d promised to give him their father’s pocket watch when he turn ten, but disappeared before his birthday.

The cats, meanwhile, have their own weird little plot in which the one black cat, Sawtooth, feels that Snow Bébé smells like bad luck and wants to kill him.

I mean, it turns out Sawtooth isn’t entirely wrong, but… it’s one of those plot twists where it’s unclear whether or not Sawtooth actually brought on the trouble by being so obsessed with Snow Bébé or visa versa.

Regardless, you can see from the above that when the cats are in their full moon form, they are very odd looking. There’s a hairless Sphinx who looks even stranger and a cat named Blue Beard who I kept mistaking for another cat named Papa, because he basically looks like a cat version of Papa Hemmingway. VERY odd.

But, I was actually very drawn into this story and the mystery of Marcel’s sister and her obvious connection to Snow Bébé. The ending, which I will not spoil, actually wraps things up very nicely. If you can get used to the cats in their “human” forms, I recommend this one. It shares the 2020 Eisner Award with Witch Hat Atelier. I can understand why. The art takes risks and the story is deeply compelling despite being very slice-of-life and not high action/high stakes.