My Dear Sister, I m writing to warn you: Cattino the cat who is soon to arrive at your house with my wife is really a lion, laments Count Lorenzaccio. Cunningly disguised as a housecat, Cattino is at home among the villas of the Italian gentry and has stolen the contessa s heart. Meanwhile, in Nairobi, the dysfunctional Jeremiah is hired to don pith helmet and riding crop as a costumed museum guard. His ward? A stuffed lion named Pasha. But with his transfixing eyes and glare of golden, liquid savagery, Pasha soon reveals himself as a regal animal indeed, rousing himself and escaping into the night. Ignacio Padilla declared this mischievous little novel to be the best Mexican literary work I have read in recent years . . . it] heralds a pen capable of that rarest of privileges in our letters: attaining the comic and profoundly human through a perfect simplicity.