Cat Found (review)

Stray and feral cats have become a problem in eleven-year-old Billy Reddick's small town, so much so that the townspeople are talking about rounding up and destroying the community of cats that congregates around the town's old chapel. While Billy's perpetually angry dad would be happy to take the first shot, Billy has a secret: he is hiding an injured stray (whom he later discovers is pregnant) in his bedroom. Gradually Billy finds some cat-loving allies—a young City Hall maintenance worker who cares for the stray colony behind the chapel, and a rebellious, artistic teenage girl who sneaks into the chapel at night to draw pictures of the strays—and together the three formulate a plan to save the cats. With its realistic details of cat injury and destruction, this is a little bleaker than the cute kitten on its cover suggests that's an authentic acknowledgment of the consequences of the situation, though, and Lee's writing is crisp and solid. Her plot, unfortunately, is fairly contrived and heavily purposive, and not enough groundwork is laid to make Billy's dad's eventual change of heart believable. The ultimate solution of the cat problem (Billy, the City Hall worker, and the girl create a miniature version of the town behind the chapel to house the cats and "attract tourists") is equally implausible. Still, there is genuine drama in Billy's predicament and in the plight of the stray cats, and the book raises some needed awareness of the complex problem of stray animal populations.