The Cat Owner’s Problem Solver

The Cat Owner’s Problem Solver:
How to Manage Common Behavior Problems by Thinking Like Your Cat
By Margaret H. Bonham

Although this is not a big book — it is well under 200 pages — it offers excellent, to-the-point solutions to many human-cat issues. And while it is human-written, the author does a pretty nice job of explaining issues from a cat’s point of view. For example, she compares a dirty litter box to a gas station restroom (thank you!) and notes that scratching is a necessity for us, not an option that can be discouraged just because a human finds it inconvenient. And she offers solutions to make the cat-human relationship work better. True, she does it from a human perspective, suggesting that we cats can be trained to keep the same waking/ sleeping hours as the humans we live with (rather than training the humans to conform to our hours, as I would prefer), and giving methods to keep us off of counters and other areas humans deem improper (frankly, I would have insisted that humans just suck it up and cope). There’s a lot of good information on broad issues like aggression, litter box problems, creating a good environment for us kitties, down to little details, such as how to gracefully accept a dead mouse or insect that your cat has gone through the effort of catching for you, and my favorite tip, making old cat toys new by putting them in a catnip-filled container. That last bit of advice is worth its weight in cat treats, and something every human should know! So until I write my own book about how humans should stop trying to think like a cat and just give in to all our desires, this book will do very well.