The motto of 32-year-old Agnes Aubert’s Cat Friends Animal Shelter is “A cat is the soul of a home.” But now, a home is precisely what Agnes and the shelter lack, thanks to dueling magicians whose otherworldly argument rudely blasted a 10-foot-wide hole in the front wall of the feline sanctuary on Rue Sainte-Roseline.
Such magic-induced destruction is frustratingly not uncommon in the alternate version of 1920s Montréal conjured up by Heather Fawcett in her 12th book, the exciting, marvelously feline-filled cozy romantasy, Agnes Aubert’s Mystical Cat Shelter, but there’s no time to fret about it: Winter is coming and Agnes needs another exceedingly pet-friendly rental to house herself and her 48 furry, purry charges.
After multiple rejections, Agnes encounters a letting agent with a listing on Rue des Hirondelles: a shop/apartment combo in a historic building with soaring arched windows and antique brickwork, available for a suspiciously low price. Agnes knows there’s probably something untoward afoot, and ignoring that might be “akin to the follies of silly fairy-tale heroines who cannot stop themselves unlocking doors they have been expressly told not to open, but the fact those stories often leave out is that paying heed to vague warnings is the prerogative of those comfortably situated in life.”
Agnes is far from comfortably situated, and she’s got four dozen cats to care for, so she signs a lease. She’ll just assiduously avoid opening the worryingly well-worn trapdoor under the Persian rug in the back office and everything will be fine—right?
Taking an unnerving leap of faith will feel familiar to readers who, like Agnes, have also endured stress-inducing searches for suitable rental homes or had to deal with terrible landlords. As Fawcett explains in a call from her home on Vancouver Island, that was absolutely intentional. “I just really enjoy fantasy worlds that feel . . . more intimate and more grounded in everyday life. When you have that established, introducing fantasy elements has more impact.”
Initially, Agnes’ new setup seems ideal: She and her two cats, His Majesty and Banshee, settle in to the luxurious upstairs apartment, and she and her younger sister, Élise, set up the ground-floor shelter for the rest of the animals. Fun-loving Élise teases the hyperorganized Agnes about her affinity for checklists and charts as they situate cats with names like Thoreau, Clowder, Marmalade, Lynx and Monk in their cages. Thankfully, there’s no hint of magic afoot, although it’s certainly odd that dramatically dressed sorts keep coming into the shop space, striding to the trapdoor and descending into the basement.
“I just really enjoy fantasy worlds that feel . . . more intimate and more grounded in everyday life. When you have that established, introducing fantasy elements has more impact.”
Alas, this dream situation meets harsh reality when Agnes discovers the property owner has been living downstairs the whole time, and he’s none other than Havelock Renard: an infamous dark magician, widely known as the Witch King, who once nearly destroyed the world. He’s illegally trading in Artefacts, vessels that magicians use to store and deploy magic. Even worse, he’s not a fan of—and is mildly allergic to—cats.
Speaking of cats, let’s take a moment to appreciate Fawcett’s delightfully varied and colorful depictions of the cats who slink and play and stretch and gallop across the pages of Agnes Aubert’s Mystical Cat Shelter. Fawcett, who considers herself “very much a character-driven author,” says, “It was very important to me to fashion character arcs for at least the main cat characters in a similar way that I would do for my human characters.” She adds, “Having been a lifelong cat owner, I’m very aware that cats have their very specific personalities and quirks.”
Take His Majesty, a huge black cat with a single white boot who, Fawcett says, “is a classic villain cat” inspired by a pet from her childhood. “We had this cat named Simon who, I swear he was feral . . . he would lurk in dark corners and attack you as you walked by.”
Then there’s Banshee, a comically quirky orange tabby whose “most habitual occupation was sitting in the middle of a room and staring fixedly at a single point for no discernible reason,” according to Agnes. Fawcett says she’s known a few Banshee-like cats in her life, and “most of them have been orange . . . with not a huge amount of thought going on.”
Probably the best part about writing this book, says Fawcett, was coming up with so many cat characters. “Whenever there are these big moments the humans are all worked up about, you just kind of have the cats there not caring at all, just a classic cat—they don’t care about your drama, they’re doing their own thing.”
“It was very important to me to fashion character arcs for at least the main cat characters in a similar way that I would do for my human characters.”
And Agnes’ realization that her cat shelter is serving as a front for an illegal magic shop serves up plenty of drama for the cats to ignore. Not only does Agnes need to pretend to the “inconveniently handsome” and doggedly inquisitive Detective Laurent Rouzet that she has no idea that Artefact trading goes on in the basement, she’s also got to worry about the possibility of marauding Artefact-seeking magicians exploding her life and home once again.
It’s a precarious state of affairs that, in Fawcett’s eminently capable hands, is ripe for humor, suspense and plenty of enchantment-infused action. In Agnes Aubert’s Mystical Cat Shelter, the bestselling author, who’s written several middle grade and YA books and is perhaps best known for her adult Emily Wilde fantasy series (the third installment, Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales, was published in 2025), has created a layered and highly entertaining tale that blends the nitty-gritty of running a nonprofit shelter in the 1920s with the fantastical goings-on that come with sharing space with a grouchy yet very attractive magician—plus exploration of sibling relationships, local politics, found family, personal reinvention and more.
There’s also the thrill of romantic possibility, a complicated prospect for Agnes who, two years on, feels the “familiar ache of longing for [her late husband] Robin, like a second heartbeat.” While Agnes’ grief “is not fresh,” says Fawcett, “it’s still very much a part of life, and she carries it with her through everything she does.”
Can Agnes make room for new love in her cat-filled, chaotic life? And how might she handle potential wooing by both a law-abiding cop and a lawbreaking magician? “Yes, that was me wanting the two love interests to be as diametrically opposed as they possibly could be,” Fawcett says with a laugh. “I don’t normally write a lot of love triangles, but . . . it was a fun trope to play with here.”
Writing a standalone novel after the Emily Wilde series was also fun for Fawcett. There was, she says, “a lot more freedom to be playful with the magic system, the structure of the world and the alternative history that it represents.” Fawcett also wonders if the change might be catnip for a different type of reader. “I know a lot of readers are looking for more standalones and not necessarily wanting to commit to quite as many big, sweeping fantasy series as they might have been in the past.”
“I don’t normally write a lot of love triangles, but . . . it was a fun trope to play with here.”
When it comes to the time period in which Agnes Aubert’s Mystical Cat Shelter exists, the author says, “I always felt like that era, the first few decades of the 20th century—maybe historians will disagree with me on this—felt like this really interesting hinge point between the old world and the new. . . . It almost feels like you’re in this sort of gateway, this sort of liminal space, where there’s some modern technology but you still have carriages and things like that. As a fantasy author, I find that it’s very rich soil to play around in for the imagination.”
Being able to imagine a different sort of existence, to consider the possibilities of a life very different from the one they’ve become accustomed to, is a pivotal consideration for Fawcett’s engaging, intriguing main characters. For years, Agnes has been striving to do her best at both caring for her cat charges and educating the citizens of Montréal about the joys and benefits of pet ownership. And Havelock has been contending with a complicated family legacy while hiding away in the basement of his building. What would it be like for Agnes to put herself first more often or to relax her anti-magic stance? Might Havelock be able to face up to what he’s been avoiding and emerge into the light . . . perhaps while embracing cat friendships?
Those are questions that can only be answered by reading Agnes Aubert’s Mystical Cat Shelter, of course. Ideally, as befits a magic-infused cozy fantasy with a slowly rising current of romance running through its center, readers will “curl up and read the book with your cat, if you have one, or your dog, beside you,” says Fawcett (who is “equal parts dog person and cat person”). Sounds purrrfect!
Author photo © Karen McKinnon