With a Dog AND a Cat, Every Day is Fun volume 2 continues Matsumoto’s manga essays on life with the Inu and Neko with guest appearances by her lizard, rabbit, and previous dogs. Messing with appliances, expressing food preferences, hogging spaces — it’s all part of the life of a pet owner! But having a cheerful goofball like Inu and a tsundere like Neko makes this animal lover’s days full of happiness — and horror.
Sadako-inspired horror in fact. Although personally, when Neko stealthily approaches Matsumoto and family, I heard the Jaws music. Either way, Matsumoto’s face says it all:
It’s easy to see why this series of Twitter strips eventually led to an anime adaptation. Cats have a reputation for being whimsical while dogs are loyal, and Matsumoto’s pets encapsulate that to the extreme. Despite being nine years old (a fact that stuns her editor), Inu’s hyperactivity makes him seem like a puppy. Meanwhile, Neko, also age 9, continues to not let his owner see any indication he’s happy or cares about anything. But when her back is turned…
The format continues to be the same as before with one page Inu followed by one for Neko and bonus features (4-koma, real-life pics) in between a batch of segments. There are also some bonus comics, and it’s with these I had the biggest disappointment with. Most of them are about Matsumoto’s journey to track down Inu’s sibling from the pet store. It’s not a long, in-depth tale or anything, but I didn’t like how it was broken up into parts. Like, after Matsumoto tells her editor there’s still “that” — and you have to continue reading the one-shots before finding out what “that” is. It’s a cute tale just like everything else, but considering this is the most traditional manga-like portion of the volume, I just wanted the whole thing bundled together like an end-of-volume bonus story.
Otherwise, the randomness continues from playing with toys to snatching food to enjoying appliances. Of course, some are funnier than others, and a lot of that seems to be tied whether we end with a reaction shot from Neko. Ending with Neko = funnier. Seeing a bit of Matsumoto’s old pets is a downer because it’s always sad to lose a pet, and even her mother bursts into tears at just having to use their name as a password. I’m sure she has some great stories about her dearly departed doggies — anyone who has ever had a pet does — but to go from Inu’s energy and Neko’s eye daggers to, “Oh, hey, let me tell you about a dog that died!” is a little depressing. But it is a part of pet ownership unfortunately.
So not much has changed for With a Dog AND a Cat, Every Day is Fun in its second volume, which is mostly a good thing. It is going to be hard to convince a lot of people that 130 pages of random pencil-like drawings is worth buying over…well, just about any other manga release. But pet owners are still likely to get their money’s worth!
…Unlike that one toy you bought for your dog or cat…sigh.