I knew I was going to love Beast Master’s heroine, Yuiko Kubozuka, within one or two pages of her introduction. At first it seems like a sweet scene: here is a teenager in a school uniform, bent over to coax her pet cat to come closer. Then her true nature appears and she picks that cat up and gives it a big ol’ snuggle. Yuiko, my friends, is a cat snuggler. I myself am a cat snuggler, and know too well the pain of cuddling with a cat who just doesn’t want to be cuddled. Lucky for me, my cats are sociable, affectionate beasts who don’t mind the odd belly rub or snuggle.

Unfortunately, Yuiko, the heroine in Beast Master, and I have a few similar traits. We are both crazy about animals, and behave like Elmira from Tiny Toon Adventures at the sight of a cute goggie or kitteh. Luckily for me, the critters don’t run in fear like they do from Yuiko. All she wants to do is love them, but the neighborhood cats and dogs all have her number. Whenever Yuiko is in the area, the animals make themselves scarce. Even her own cat flees from her, because her displays of affection are just too much to handle.

Seventeen-year-old Yuiko Kubozuka loves animals. Unfortunately, they definitely don’t love her back. (She is always trying too hard, apparently, and scares them away.) Then one day—an appropriately stormy one where the rain is falling in sheets and bolts of lightning are lighting up the heavens—she meets him, a boy who is practically a wild animal himself. The boy, as it turns out, is actually a transfer student at Yuiko’s school who had been living abroad for many years, and his name is Leo Aoi.