“Seventeen years; and here we are at that day. The one of us in spirit, the other in scarred, aging body with just one risky job, the last risky job, left to do: to tell the story of the shared existence that filled those years … Yes, she was a cat; but if you are tempted, even for an instant, to use any such phrase as “just a cat,” I can only hope that you will read on, and discover how that “mere” cat not only ruled her untamed world, but brought life-affirming purpose to my own” – Caleb Carr, My Beloved Monster”.

Readers may know Caleb Carr from his critically acclaimed mystery/crime novel The Alienist (1994). The book takes place in 1890’s, gaslight New York, a favorite setting of mine . But another reason I was interested in the Alienist is that Caleb Carr is the son of Lucien Carr, an important figure from the Beat generation.

Lucien was the young man who in 1944 introduced Allen Ginsberg to Jack Kerouac and knowing something about what a wild and violent youth Lucien had experienced I remember thinking what would it be like to grow up with Lucien Carr as one’s father? Caleb Carr has now told us in My Beloved Monster and it’s not Father Know’s Best.

But mainly My Beloved Monster is about Masha, Carr’s Siberian Forest cat. Masha and Carr lived together in their rural home in upstate New York from 2005 until Masha’s death in 2022. Carr died shortly after in 2024. There is a loneliness and sadness that pervades this book because Masha and Carr are pretty much hermits but as Carr writes neither seemed to mind. They were enough for each other.

As to how a successful writer like Caleb Carr ended up living in isolation, Carr shares that story too. He blames his distrust of people and his inability to form lasting relationships on his childhood. His parents were alcoholics and his father Lucien was physically abusive so much so that Caleb faced debilitating spinal issues in later years due to his father throwing him downstairs as a child. But as Carr tells us cats were his safety net during his childhood:

“And whom did I have for company. The cats, who also hated noise and unpredictable behavior … As I sat there, at the top of the stairs down which I would periodically tumble, the cats would materialize from out of the shadows … bump their muzzles and heads into my face, marking me as their territory and by doing so imparting compassion for my plight”.

As for Masha, the subject of Carr’s memoir, we learn alot about her personality, her moods, her antics and dare I say too much? I was craving more interaction between Carr and other humans. But with the exception of visits to Masha’s vet to treat her arthritis and visits to Carr’s doctor to treat his neuropathy, its basically Caleb Carr and Masha’s story.

And it’s a unique kind of memoir. Carr is a talented writer and when he wrote My Beloved Monster he had inoperable cancer. Serious and terminal illness memoirs seem to be a thing right now. They can be very powerful (When Breath Becomes Air, Between Two Kingdoms). Carr could have written a similar memoir about his cancer. Or he could have devoted his book entirely to his abusive childhood and the lifelong damage it caused him.

But its almost like when Masha died in 2022 Carr said to himself, you know I am going to write a life affirming memoir about my beloved Masha and the 17 years we spent together. And that’s what he has done.