Charm

Charm: An Amazing Story of a Little Black Cat (2010) is Leyla Atke’s memoir of her relationship with a rescue cat. Intended for middle-grade readers, the short book invokes religious and mystical themes as it describes the cat’s appearance, disappearance, and seeming reappearance in the author’s life. The text is accompanied by illustrations that suggest the book is intended for an elementary school audience, but some readers worry that the frankness with which Atke discusses pet death might be too much for young children.

On a hot summer day in June of 2006, Leyla is on her way to get a haircut when she sees something black and furry moving in the middle of the road, between the speeding cars. She stops her car when the opposing traffic has a red light, realizing that the small object is a black kitten. Although she is already late to her hairdresser appointment, something about the kitten captures Leyla’s fancy and she decides she has to help it.

Unsure of what to do with the dirty animal that smells like kerosene, Leyla at first just wants to move him off the road and into a nearby park. On the way, she is struck by its cuteness and gentle nature, so instead, she takes it to her aunt’s house. Her aunt agrees to “shelter the kitten only until the evening.” All that day, Leyla thinks about the kitten and decides to keep him, even though she already has another cat. After cleaning the kitten up, Leyla names him Charm. The first thing the next day, she takes Charm to the vet to get him neutered and vaccinated.



For the few months that Leyla has Charm, he is adorable. He loves egg yolks and adventure, enjoying wandering across the street from Leyla’s house onto the grounds of a factory.

Then, as suddenly as he entered the author’s life, Charm disappears from it. One day, Leyla finds the kitten is missing—he escaped from the house and is nowhere to be found. Eventually, Leyla finds Charm’s dead body and realizes that he must have been killed on September 30 that year, a day already marked with meaning because it is Leyla’s brother’s birthday. Leyla buries Charm in her backyard.

Though his death seems like a terrible accident, the book steers the reader into considering its mystical meanings. Losing Charm upsets Leyla, and she thinks of the kitten as a short-term visitor in her life whose job it was to prepare her for other losses and for the unforeseeable future.



A year later, again on September 30, Leyla marks the anniversary of Charm’s death. That day, she sees just outside her house, on the very spot in the back yard where Charm was buried, a small black kitten is being harassed by neighborhood dogs. Leyla rescues this new kitten, shocked by how much he looks and behaves like Charm. After saving him from the dogs, Leyla decides to keep him—and to name him Charm in honor of the original kitten.

The book lingers on the seeming significance of Leyla finding the new Charm on the same date that the original one died, and on the same spot where the first Charm was buried. Is this kitten the reincarnated version of the dead Charm—a way for that cat to have come back to Leyla even after its untimely death? The book doesn’t resolve this question one way or the other but leaves the interpretation of this coincidence up to the reader. Either it’s simply fairly common to find stray cats near human habitats, or else the universe has conjured up a second version of Charm to allow a kitten a second chance at life and to give Leyla the opportunity to have more time with her cute kitten.