Bonus Content
The Meowmorphosis
One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that he had been changed into an adorable kitten. He lay in bed on his soft, fuzzy back and saw, as he lifted his head a little, his brown arched abdomen divided into striped bowlike sections. From this height the blanket, just about ready to slide off completely, could hardly stay in place as he rolled from side to side. His legs—too many!—pitifully thin compared to the rest of his rotund circumference, pawed helplessly before his eyes.
“What’s happened to me?” he thought. It was no dream. His room--a proper room for a human being, only somewhat too small--lay quietly between the four well-known walls. Above the table, on which was spread an unpacked collection of sample cloth goods—Samsa was a traveling salesman—hung the picture that he had cut out of an illustrated magazine a little while ago and set in a pretty gilt frame. It was a picture of a woman with a fur hat and a fur boa. She sat erect there, lifting in the direction of the viewer a solid fur muff into which her entire forearm had disappeared. Samsa felt a powerful urge to leap upon the sample cloths and scratch at them thoroughly, but as soon as it had come, it passed.
Gregor’s glance then turned to the window. The dreary weather—the raindrops were falling audibly on the metal window ledge—made him quite melancholy. “Why don’t I keep sleeping for a little while longer and forget all this foolishness,” he thought. But this was entirely impractical, for he was used to sleeping on his back, and in his present state he couldn’t get comfortable in this position. No matter how hard he threw himself onto his back, he always rolled again onto his furry side, or his belly, his haunches settling last onto his old bed. He must have tried it a hundred times, closing his eyes so that he would not have to see the waggling paws, and gave up only when he began to feel a light, dull pain in his side that he had never felt before.
“O God,” he thought, yawning and stretching his front paws. “What a demanding job I’ve chosen! Day in, day out, always on the road. The stress of selling is much harder than the work going on at the head office, and on top of that I have to cope with the problems of traveling: the worries about train connections, the irregular and bad food, the never-ending stream of new people with whom you never get to make a real connection. To hell with it all!” He felt a slight itching on the top of his back, between his shoulders. He slowly wriggled closer to the bedpost so that he could lift his head more easily, found the itchy part, which was entirely covered with small white spots—he did not know what to make of them and wanted to feel the place with a claw. But he retracted it immediately, for the contact felt like a cold shower all over him.
Copyright © 2011 by Quirk Productions, Inc.
The Meowmorphosis
Meet Gregor Samsa, a young man who works as a salesman to support his parents and sister…until one morning he wakes up and discovers that, inexplicably, he has turned into a man-sized cuddly kitten. Talk about cat-astrophe—his family flips! Yes, their son is OMG-so-cute, but cute doesn’t pay the bills. And is he really so selfish as to devote all his attention to a scrap of ribbon? As his kittenish new identity threatens to swipe his personality, Gregor desperately tries to survive his bizarre ordeal by accomplishing the one thing he never could as a man: Flee his parents’ house.
Mash-ups don’t get much hairier than The Meowmorphosis—a paws-itively shocking retelling of Franz Kafka’s classic nightmare tale by Coleridge Cook.
Hardcover : 208 pages
Publisher: Quirk Publications ( May 01, 2011 )
Item #: 13-332797
ISBN: 9781611297171
Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 8.25 inches
Product Weight: 10.0 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Horribly sadistic 
April 16, 2012
This is the WORST book I have ever read! AND its under "Children Fiction?" Being a cat-lover, I was devastated at the abuse this cat went through! I kept reading it only in hopes of the story getting better. Not even close. So, I had to find out the author's biography, and doing so I found out that even though cats were around him and loved him during his lifetime, he refused to acknowledge their admiration for him. I wish I had never read it. Cats are God's creation!!!
Reviewer: Marti
Depressing, horrible story with no point.
March 09, 2012
This has to be one of the worst books I have ever read. It tells the story of a young man who wakes up one morning to find he has become a cat! I can accept the lack of any attempt to explain this transformation as a fantasy novelist's license, but the story makes no headway; it does not go anywhere. It is the slowest, most tedious 190 pages you will ever have the misfortune to read (unless you, being smarter than me, don't read it).
The family of the main character, Gregor Samsa, plays no significant part in the tale (and I use the word very loosely). Upon learning his son is now a very large kitten, the father simply gets angry and forces the cat back into his son's bedroom. His mother is a total wimp, and neither of his parents discuss the transformation at all; neither do they have a doctor or mystic or anyone look into the occurrence. His sister conspires to deprive him of the only things that make his life mildly interesting (furniture, etc.), since he is locked in his bedroom all the time.
Finally, out of some peculiar sense of love for his family, he lies down and dies, after which event his sister becomes more beautiful and his family forgets him.
The end. Do yourselves a favor and avoid this book like the plague.
Reviewer: Brent J
October 07, 2011
WHAT?
Reviewer: carol
Catastrophically Kafka
August 10, 2011
This is an interesting if too close to the original retelling of Kafka's work, and making the nature of poor Samsa's transformation feline rather than insectile or monstrous brings home the point strongly and poignantly. It is true that serious lit is often written in such a way that the readers, should they survive till the bitter end, have had all life, hope and joy drained from their souls. And so it is with Meowmorphosis, as dense and tedious and harrowing as the original, and with the same ending for Samsa.
The end that Samsa finds would seem more deserved were he, as in The Metamorphosis, a(n) insect/bug/vermin/monster (Ungeziefer, auf Deutsch). A kitten, an adorable one no less, should have been-- adored. I spent the first half of the book awaiting the family's realization that Samsa deserved to be cuddled and petted. I waited in vain, for the best they have for him is disdain and approbation. And that is the point of the exercise.
I was disappointed in that Meowmorphosis was little besides retelling. So much more were possible, had Coleridge brought fresh ideas to the story. Capturing the soul sucking effect of the original by remaining true to its text, he neglects to recast the story in a more contemporary idiom. There is a missed opportunity to look at Samsa and his situation in a new light and find some other fate, if only a different doom, for him. Even with Samsa still doomed, deeper exploration of the characters of the story, the thinking and alternatives behind Samsa's eventual decision, and of the attitudes of the others would have made Meowmorphosis far better than it was.
Reviewer: philipp r
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