Catlantis is an amusing cat tale of magical proportions. A love-struck house cat risks his life through magical time travel to prove his love to the amazing stay, Purriana.

The book, ‘Catlantis’, by Anna Starobinets is translated from the Russian version by Jane Burgaeva. It is a tale of how Baguette, an inside cat living with the Petrov family, finds himself traveling through time to a far off place called Catlantis. He is a descendant of the magical Catlanteans, and is instructed to bring back a Catlantic flower to prove his love to the alley cat, Purriana. Every night Baguette would purrenade her from the 12th floor of his Russian apartment. He was definitely in love, and wanted to do whatever it took to win the heart of his Purriana.

As the book takes on the age-old dichotomy of good and bad, the white cats become white or good magic. Conversely, the black cats are bad and evil with black magic.

Like Atlantis,Catlantis sinks into the ocean with its beautiful white cats, black cats, ginger cats, gray cats, striped and spotted cats. The cats; however, are not destroyed. They live on in time, and  make up the ever powerful Council of Six that has come down through the ages and still rules the cat hierarchy.

Evil destroys all good even with cats

We also find story line of how evil destroys all good. When Baguette returns to Catlantis, he sees first hand how the cats destroyed the perfect Catlantis. They became too obsessed by their own importance. They dismissed the Gods who had given them a perfect setting with fish being thrown up from the sea, and birds dropping down from the skies for them to feed upon. That caused the island to sink. The instigator, of course, was a black cat.

Catlantis is an amusing cat tale of magical proportions

The cats fall victim to the black cats rants, stating it’s the cats and not the Gods, being responsible for everything being so perfect on the island. Consequently, the Gods turn on the cats. The the rains come, the earthquake comes, and the island sinks into the Catlantic Ocean.

The Catlantic Flower

Baguette knows nothing of this. He only knows that he would do anything to win the heart of Purriana and marry her. However, rival black cat Noir has no intention of letting that happen. And Purriana’s great-grandmother, an Oracle, one of the 6 members of the Catantis Wise Council of Six,has plans for Baguette. As a Ginger cat, he can travel through time, and he is tasked to go back in time and bring her cat a Catlantic Flower before she dies. That’s the only way he will get permission to marry his Purriana.

The story is very captivating, as we travel through time back thousands and thousands of years to a very different world. The cats of Catlantis were much bigger than the ones of today.

He captures the flower and gets out of Catlantis as it was sinking. Only he miscalculates his destination and ends of up France, where he finds a black cat being put on a sort of witches’ trial. Before the trial is complete, the cats are instructed to forget what the Catlantic flower looks like. The one Baguette has taken, had wilted, and  he has no flower.

The story unfolds and Baguette finally is united with Purriana and the Petrovs, only to find the Catlantic flower has been at the Petrov’s home all along.

In the end Baguette wins Purriana. Noir, the black cat, is put in his place. With a happy ending, Baguette and Purriana  live with the Petrovs with 6 kittens. Noir is stripped of his powers is the local alley. He then slinks off to another alley to regain his reputation as a cat to be reckoned with.

A Happy Ending

It’s a cute story, and we commend Anna Starobinets for translating the Russian version of his story written by Jane Burgaeva. We love how she has taken a number of terms and applied the Cat or Purr before them to make them a new word in our English language. Our only wish is that she had chosen a striped cat to be an evil cat, as so many of us try to dispel the myth that black cats are evil. Black cats are indeed wonderful and loving cats.

Published by the New York Review of Books, it is available at amazon.com and many other book major stores.

Do you think your cat could do magical things? Do you think your cat could travel through time? What do you think is the most magical thing your cat could do? What do you think about black cats being portrayed as bad? Many stories do this as in the typical American Western.