I really enjoyed A Lovestruck Cat Wants to be Petted. It did exactly what it says in the title and hit the right sweet spot of minimal conflict and a cute developing relationship between the two main characters. Kotetsu is a cat who has been turned into a human through some unknown force and still has cat ears and tail that he has to hide. He can also talk to cats and has a cat friend that knew him before his transformation. He goes to the pet store a lot to get cat food to share with his cat friends and develops a crush on Okazaki, the man who works there. Okazaki tells Kotetsu that he thinks all cats are cute except for black cats, which creep him out. Since Kotetsu is/was a black cat, he thinks that Okazaki will never like him if he knows the truth.
Feelings develop between them as Kotetsu keeps hanging around the pet store and staring at Okazaki through the windows. Part of the charm of the book is Kotetsu’s cat-like mannerisms, which come across as quirky in a human but make a lot of sense if you know he’s actually a cat. He wants to be petted, he’s afraid of dogs, he keeps jumping and falling off of things — all of which Okazaki thinks is cute. The ending is never really in doubt here but the journey to get there is well illustrated and charming. I loved the open heartedness of Okazaki and his kind nature. I also liked seeing little hints of how Kotetsu had survived as a human (he works for a small candy store run by a kind old lady, who seems to have taken him in at some prior date). I would have appreciated seeing more of how Kotetsu turned into a human and how he adjusted, but there’s a vague magical realism to it where everyone just accepts this is what happened and rolls with it that was also nice. No reason to worry about it, this cat is a human now so let’s get him a job and a boyfriend!
There are some explicit sex scenes. Kotetsu has a cat like idea of there being heats and mating, so Okazaki has to teach him about human sexuality, but it’s sweetly done and there’s lot of careful consent.