The Trench Cat of Ypres

1917-1918

In the mud and the madness, they built a kingdom too small for the war to see.

Ypres Salient, 1917.

Private Tommy Finch buys a scruffy ginger cat for a shilling.

Officially, she is a ratter, meant to keep the trenches free of vermin. Unofficially, she becomes something else entirely: a silent companion in the mud and terror of the Western Front, an early warning system for shellfire and gas, and a small, living responsibility in a world dominated by death.

When the cat—Penny—gives birth to kittens in a captured trench, the fragile family becomes a secret project for Tommy’s section, a quiet act of care against the vast, indifferent machinery of war. But in an army governed by discipline and necessity, such attachments are dangerous. Orders are given. Choices narrow. What can be protected, and at what cost?

The Trench Cat of Ypres is a spare, deeply grounded story of the First World War. Set entirely within the trench systems of Belgium, it tells a small story about unofficial lives lived alongside soldiers—lives rarely recorded, easily erased, and fiercely held onto all the same.

An unexpected ending.

I really enjoyed the book. It was so sad , but powerful in the the end. I never give AI’s a good review. I prefer people. I love cats, I can understand the end it’s just hard to listen to. Thank you