At the beginning of the volume, FukuFuku's owner (whose name is never mentioned) is sitting with her adult cat, FukuFuku, and looking through old pictures of FukuFuku as a kitten. After those first couple pages, the entire series basically becomes a flashback to FukuFuku's kitten days: adjusting to her new home, dealing with her first bath, napping with her owner, learning to use a scratching post, meeting other cats, etc.

I've read and adored Kanata's Chi's Sweet Home. FukuFuku: Kitten Tales was very similar in a lot of ways. The most noticeable differences: Chi's Sweet Home was in color while FukuFuku: Kitten Tales featured black and white artwork, and Chi's owners were a married couple and their young song while FukuFuku's owner was an older woman who lived alone. Also, Chi's thoughts and dialogue were translated for readers, whereas FukuFuku just meowed and purred. I don't think the two series crossover at all, but it wouldn't surprise me to learn I was wrong.

I don't have a lot to say about this volume that I haven't already said about Chi's Sweet Home. It was very warm, sweet, and comforting, and I particularly liked the chapters devoted to FukuFuku and her owner sleeping together. FukuFuku napping inside the jack-o'-lantern was nice too. The one part that was a bit off was FukuFuku's Alice in Wonderland-inspired dream.

I plan to read more of this, although it's not the instant favorite that Chi's Sweet Home was. While I liked that readers had to rely entirely on FukuFuku's facial expressions, body language, and situation to figure out what she was thinking and feeling, this series felt a little less lively and fun than Chi's Sweet Home. Maybe it was because this volume was almost entirely focused on FukuFuku and her owner? If her owner has any family or friends, we haven't seen them yet, and FukuFuku has only briefly met a few other animals - one black and white cat made a repeat appearance, but not enough of one to get a feel for its personality.

And speaking of personality, I'd say FukuFuku was possibly a little more standoffish than Chi (it took her a bit to learn to enjoy being petted, for example), but otherwise she came across as very similar to Chi. I hope the differences in her personality start to stand out more as the series progresses.

All in all, so far I prefer Chi's Sweet Home, but FukuFuku: Kitten Tales is very nice and hits a lot of the same "warm fuzzies" emotional notes. Looks like I have another cat manga to work my way through.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

Look, if you have cats - in particular if you have black cats - skip this book.  Run screaming from it.  Hide from it.  It's one of those "something bad happens to animals so kids learn life lesson" crap books.  

The writing is good, but yeah, no.

Gloria has a problem, and it isn't that her dog has died.  (Don't worry, the dog dies before the story starts and it was old age).  Someone keeps leaving shelter cats at her front door.  She is being turned into a crazy cat lady.

The story is somewhat predictable, but quite sweet.  The cats are all differeent and well drawn as characters.

This is a slight book of occasional short stories and poetry that gives me a really disproportionate amount of pleasure: or, at least, I'm sure people would think it disproportionate who aren't also followers of the 24-hour live streams of foster kittens upon which its "characters" are based. Chief amongst these streams, and the only one I follow with any regularity, is the kitten cam of Foster Dad John, a middle-aged IT guy who lives just outside of Seattle, a gentle, knowledgeable cat-lover who is that rarest of males, neither camera-shy nor a grandstander. Though he sometimes gets other assignments, generally he sees a litter of kittens through from birth to adoptable age at 8 weeks or a little older; most often the mother cats are also part of the deal. He takes his educative role seriously, but never pompously, and famously does undignified things like sweeping out his "Critter Room's" floors, building elaborate anti-climbing contrivances (which inevitably fail eventually) and falling asleep on camera with the kittens crawling all over him.

Jill Pickford is part of his international following (she's based in Britain), but whereas others content themselves with chatting online, or donating to FDJ's parent shelter Purrfect Pals, or making drawings or craft-y gifts for the kittens' going-away, she has been composing occasion-driven cat point-of-view stories (or verse) for several years now, often helping other viewers through some of the more traumatic events in that little world like the death of a kitten. Encouraged by those other viewers, she has developed that alternate cat world - and chiefly its relation to the "other side" of the rainbow bridge - into a fantasy world with its own rules and dominant characters. The mother cats figure prominently in her stories, as do the fragile kittens who failed to thrive, those of their living siblings whose adoptive owners have signalled tolerance for publicity by inviting cam viewers on to dedicated post-adoptive facebook pages, and the brother and sister cats of those same adopted facebook cats. In short, there is a fairly large circle of reference through social media which pretty much dictates the extent of the expected readership for these stories.

That said, in the later stories in the volume, Pickford has allowed herself a bit of freedom from the constraints of real incidents and courtesy to private individuals (including FDJ himself), by inventing whole other lives for cats once they are across the Rainbow Bridge or, in the case of two lost kittens, their "next lives" (since cats have 9). This is where Pickford's generous imagination and clever writing sings, in my opinion - and it is here, too, that there is the opportunity to find readership not just amongst those in the social media fan club.

All proceeds go to Purrfect Pals, by the way - like many fan communities, this is a gift culture, as is evident by the wide variety of (international) collaboration that has gone into the publication. Even had it given me far less pleasure than it did, I would have been happy to know that its purchase (it was a generous gift from my sister, another Kitten Cam follower) put a few more pennies into the hands of that worthy shelter.

To find FDJ and his current batch of kittens, google "The Critter Room", or search youtube with that same phrase (youtube is his platform now; he was priced out of his previous one).