I Live Here Too

You bought the house. You pay the mortgage. You assembled the furniture with your own two hands and the wordless rage of someone missing a screw. And somewhere along the way, a creature with no job, no thumbs, and absolutely no respect for personal space quietly took over the entire operation — and had the nerve to fall asleep on the evidence.

I Live Here Too is Frankie Hollis's warmly funny field guide to the strange, undignified, wholly involuntary business of being owned by an animal. In seventeen sharply observed comic pieces, Hollis maps the glorious absurdity of the arrangement we all pretend is the other way around: the 3 a.m. board meetings convened on your chest, the four-hundred-dollar vet visit that concludes with a shrug and a he's fine, the deluxe robotic toy abandoned in favor of the cardboard box it arrived in, and the camera roll quietly filling with four thousand nearly identical photos of a sleeping tyrant who, let's be honest, runs the place.

It begins the way these things always do — with a man, a laminated checklist, and the firm belief that he was the one doing the choosing. He was not. He was the candidate. And the interview was already over before he opened his mouth.

Hollis writes with the timing of a stand-up and the tenderness of someone who has whispered who's a good boy into the fur of a creature who unmistakably owns him, and meant every word. It's funny enough to read aloud across the couch to whoever's buried under the same cat, and warm enough that a graying muzzle will get you, right in the soft part, when you least expect it.

If you have ever lost a negotiation to something the size of a loaf of bread and thanked it afterward, this book knows exactly who you are.

Grab your copy and finally admit who really lives here.