Review by Frank Plowright

A second slim collection of Michael’s activities as delivered by Makoto Kobayashi is another thirteen six-page stories in which Michael regularly shifts owners and can step from the reality of cat fights into the fantasy of a dogs versus cats baseball game.

The title strip is a typically bizarre offering in which one of Michael’s owners underlines the distinction of what’s for humans and what’s for cats, labelling doors bowls and can-openers. He’s not one of those who considers cats to be people. Oh no, he’s well aware of the difference. So why does he forget himself, prompting an illustration of the guy squatting in the litter tray? Primarily because it’s funny.

For the most part, whichever of several owners he’s with, Michael does as he pleases when he pleases, no matter how awkward that might be for anyone else. However, he’s not without challenges. His deadliest enemy is revealed here, and it’s not the neighbourhood fat cat Nyazilla, who’ll surely be returning. Definitely returning here in the penultimate strip is the Yakuza owner scared of being outed as a cat lover. It’s reinforced that Yakuza gangsters shouldn’t keep cats.

As drawn by Kobayashi, Michael is a funny looking cat. On the rotund side, his eyes are closely placed together, but he crawls like a cat, strolls like a cat and leaps like a cat. The assorted owners are on a scale of caricature, ranging from relatively normal to intended as comical. Only the mad vet is further along the scale than the guy with the wart on his nose seen on the sample page.

It was the case with Michael’s Album, Living Together will also prove irresistible to cat lovers and mystifying to everyone else. Alternatively, you could head straight for Fatcat Collection Volume 1, which combines the first six paperbacks, which continue with Off the Deep End.