"The Rabbi's Cat"

[fiefoe]

Joann Sfar's drawing style is very relaxed, with many grace notes. The cat is so sharp-faced that at first I mistook it for a rat, but Sfar apparently drew from life -- there's a photo of the artist and his pet/model on the dust jacket. The rabbi has a blunt hook of a nose and wears pointy-toed slippers that show his stubby, hairy legs. The location shots (1930s Algiers) are also lovely - a tiled garden, a sea port busy with dinghies, cobbled streets shaded by palm trees.

The story so far:
    The cat ate an annoying parrot and gained the power of speech. Right away, it ate the rabbi's rabbi for breakfast in a theological debate. ("It's not true that you have to be old for the Kabbalah. That's just a trick of Talmud scholars to avoid competition from mystical doctrine.") But the rabbi was undaunted. ('He tells me that among Jews there are no symbols and no allegories.')  Then the cat and the rabbi shared a bad dream in which his daughter, its mistress was dead. Their grief drowned the city in water and uncomprehending fish swam by them, surrounding them with bubbles.