The Ninth Life of Missy (Paperback)

Raj Shankar

ISBN 13: 9798950772023

Published by Three Cats Press, 2026

About this Item

Paperback. May Calloway is very good at leaving. She has built her whole life around it - temporary apartments, transactional relationships, a one-way ticket to Ireland already booked. Then Missy, her rescue tabby, begins speaking in the voice of Michael Devaney: a dead FBI analyst who doesn't know how he died, can't quite remember his own name, and is certain of only one thing - he failed his daughter, and he needs May's help to make it right.What follows is part mystery, part impossible miracle, part slow undoing. As Michael's memories surface in fragments - a kitchen table, a recital, a hallway full of regret - May is pulled into a search she has no business caring about, alongside a dockworker who keeps showing up asking for nothing at all. Helping Michael find his daughter means sorting through his failures and her own history of being left behind. It also means that when the search ends, he will be gone.For the first time, May has to sit with the question she has spent years avoiding: what if staying is the answer?The Ninth Life of Missy is a haunting, funny, and quietly heartbreaking novel about grief, abandonment, and the courage to let someone see you. Some ghosts ask for closure. This one asks for a life. May is packing for Ireland when her rescue cat begins speaking in the voice of a dead FBI analyst - a father who needs her help reaching the daughter he failed, before his last chance to make it right disappears. This item is printed on demand. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9798950772023

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Ninth Life of Missy (Paperback)
• Publisher: Three Cats Press
• Publication Date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 13: 9798950772023
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

May Calloway has never been a person who stays.

At twenty-three she has a one-way ticket to Ireland, an apartment full of boxes she started packing the day she moved in, and a lifetime of practice at leaving first — before anyone else can decide she isn't worth keeping. Greenport was only ever a place to wait out the season. The plan was simple. The plan did not account for the cat.

Missy — a torn-eared tabby, unimpressed by everything, a stray nobody else wanted — was supposed to be temporary too. Gone by spring. But there is something in the way the cat watches her. Something that feels less like being tolerated and more like being seen. And one box at a time, against every rule May has built her life around, the leaving stops.

Set on the working waterfront of Long Island's North Fork, The Ninth Life of Missy is a tender, funny, quietly devastating novel about grief carried gently, love that arrives in the shape you least expect, and a woman discovering — almost too late — that she might be worth staying for.

For readers of Remarkably Bright Creatures and A Man Called Ove.

About the Author

Raj Shankar writes warm, literary fiction about home, belonging, and the stubborn people who decide to stay. By day he practices immigration law on Long Island - work that runs quietly beneath both of his novels, each one circling the same question: what it means to build a life in a place that never quite promised to keep you.He lives on Long Island with his wife and their three cats - Toby, Lyla, and Peanut - the namesakes and unofficial editorial board of Three Cats Press. The Ninth Life of Missy is his second novel.www.threecatspress.com