Do your cats hate plants? Ours certainly do, to the point that we can’t keep them any more — plants, that is. As if you were even wondering. But the feline protagonist of cartoonist Lauren Barnett’s 2019 Tinto Press-published Bernadette takes plant hatred to a whole new level.

Okay, I’ll be the first to admit that this probably sounds like a threadbare premise to carry over the course of 42 pages, but it’s not like Bernadette just sits around stewing about her owner’s new houseplant the whole way through. Like any cat, she also likes to eat, sleep, jump around a bit, and — well, that’s about it. So, is all of that, then, enough to fill out 42 pages? I guess that’s the real question.

In the hands of most artists, the answer to that would, of course, be a pretty unequivocal “no,” but Barnett is a special…