The World Is Still Your Litter Box

A couple of years ago, Quasi, a savvy white mancat, came out with a smart little book called The World Is Your Litter Box. This manual of tips and tricks for cats was a must-read for any kitty. The sequel takes things a step further and digs into the finer points of human manipulation, domination in a multi-cat household (since the first book, Quasi has acquired a pair of feline roommates), and adds a few fast facts for good measure (want 20 reasons that cats are smarter than humans? Here they are!). First, Quasi shows you how to determine if your human is a “true cat nut,” then shows you the tricks to use if your human falls short. For example, there is a chapter devoted to levels cute you need to attain to get away with any infraction imaginable (even if you start the Third World War!). And if your roommates (of the cat variety) are causing you grief, or if you need to brush up on your battle skills, there are lots of helpful tips here. Whether you want to shred the couch in relative peace, get your litter box changed or convince your humans that putting you on a diet was the worst idea ever, Quasi has an answer for you. I highly recommend this book for any cat who wants to make the most out of life. Follow his words of wisdom, and you’ll have your whole household at your command.

Making Rounds with Oscar

I made the same mistaken assumption about this book that I think a lot of humans have (and trust me, I am not thrilled with having a mistake in common with humans). I thought this was going to be a book about Oscar, the cat who lives in a nursing home and helps patients through their final dying moments. But it’s not really about Oscar at all. It’s about Dr. Dosa’s observations concerning Alzheimer’s disease and how it affects both his patients and the patients’ families. Oscar is pretty much a coda to each story, only appearing when a patient dies. Although the doctor, skeptical at first, comes to believe that Oscar knows when a patient is dying, and even offers an idea or two as to how this kitty knows (hint: it has something to do with our fine sense of smell), he never even considers the obvious question — why Oscar has chosen this role for himself.

Normally I would be a little peeved about this and accuse Dr. Dosa (who does not even like cats) of using Oscar to draw people to his book, since cat books are so popular, and Oscar has made a name for himself in the press. There are no real cat stories per se, and it’s clear that we kitties do not resonate with Dr. Dosa at all. But his book does a good service for humans who have to cope with Alzheimer’s. It brings humanity to the disease and the stories behind the patients are interesting. So I can’t really be mad at him. Just keep in mind that this is a book about Alzheimer’s, and not really a book about a cat.

Housecat Confidential

You can have your “bad cats,” cats with stuff on them and “cheeszburger” cats — I’ll take a memoir any day. A good non-celebrity memoir creates a bond between author and reader. It offers a window through which readers can share, and identify with, the author’s most intimate and revealing moments. The memoir shows up only rarely in feline literature; the last notable effort was The Silent Miaow, by a mid-last century kitty named Cica and translated by Paul Gallico. Now we have a new memoirist in our midst — Fin, from the blog Housecat Confidential. At the age of 15, Fin is a good age to sit down and write a memoir — she has a lot to look back on, but she is still active enough to reap the rewards that come with a successful release, and this is a book with a well-deserved reputation that has already spread throughout the Cat Blogosphere. Housecat Confidential, the book, is down-to-earth, honest and even a bit juicy in parts (yes, I’m specifically referring to the “Mousey” chapter). Like many cats, Fin’s life had somewhat murky beginnings, but brightened considerably once she found a good human family. Of course, there were some kinks that needed to be worked out (human training, the temporary appearance of a creature known as the Infidel, etc.). Along the way, Fin also dishes up fun tidbits that both cats and humans will find enlightening: the various meows and their meanings, pet peeves, and The Secret of Life.

Reading this book is like sitting down and sharing a sun patch with a good friend. Fin is wise, but never preachy. She always keeps it real. My only complaint? I would have loved there to be a table of contents… but then, maybe there aren’t many cats like me, who like to flip back and re-read favorite chapters (“A Day in the Life” immediately comes to mind). That is a minor quibble, however, for a book that is a fine feline summer read.

Catscapades

This is simply a book about cats, most of whom passed through the author’s life at one point or another — some briefly, some for a lifetime (in cat years, that is). But of course, no cat strolls through a human’s life without leaving her mark, and a few lessons learned. So what’s simple on the surface is actually not so simple at all.

A few of the cats you will meet along the way include: Winfield, the quirky, water-loving kitty who proved that cats can forgive; PomPom, the mother cat who knew that only one human could save her injured kitten; Katy and Daisy who went from being adversaries to best friends; and friendly Lily, who overcame a traumatic injury and whose personality bore a haunting resemblance to the recently-passed Winfield. This short but charming book of stories also includes some wise advice on living with cats. Clearly the kitties who have lived with Ms. Fry have trained her well.

In the first Warriors series, we met Firestar and saw his progression from housecat (or “kittypet”) to leader of Thunderclan, one of four groups of wild, Warrior cats living in and around a forest. These six books were such an impressive beginning that the subsequent two series have paled in comparison. The characters in “The New Prophecy” series weren’t quite as engaging, and many readers were out-and-out disappointed with the third series, “Power of Three.” Fortunately, the fourth, and supposedly final Warriors series, “Omen of the Stars,” has gotten off to a very promising start. There is adventure right from the start of the first book, The Fourth Apprentice. It centers around Dovepaw, a likeable new apprentice who has the amazing ability to “see” what is going on in other parts of the forest, even events that are happening very far away. The lake where the cats live has all but dried up and only Dovepaw knows the cause — beavers building a dam far upstream. Her vision takes warriors from all four clans on an expedition to stop the beavers. Clearly, Dovepaw’s talent indicates that she is the third cat of the prophecy — the one who, along with Lionheart and Jayfeather, will “have the power of the stars in their paws.” And they will need it — Fading Echoes hints at a battle to come that will be bigger than the four clans combined. The villainous Tigerstar is still prowling the Dark Forest, and he is gathering his forces for an all-out war that will no doubt shake all the clans — including Starclan, the clan of feline ancestors — to their very core! Fading Echoes ends with a deadly battle that hints that evil may lurk closer to Dovepaw than she realizes. If the authors known collectively as Erin Hunter really do plan to wrap up the Warriors books with the final four of this series, they will be going out with a bang!

Get The Fourth Apprentice here:

Get Fading Echoes here:

The Cat Owner’s Problem Solver:
How to Manage Common Behavior Problems by Thinking Like Your Cat

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.

Cats! Train Your Owner! 50 Feline Training Flash Cards

Hey kitties — do you have new humans who are clueless about what you require from them? Then you should make sure they pick up these handy flash cards that explain cat care basics, from litter to loneliness, from hairballs to hygiene. Having these simple facts laid out on fun, illustrated cards is a great idea — it works around the natural human aversion towards learning new things by making the process fun! The cards are organized quite simply, with color codes for each category — “Care and Feeding,” “Health” and “Behaviors” — and the information is kept short and to the point. The cards themselves are actually human-written; if you’re a cat, this is obvious, but most humans can’t tell the difference between cat writing and a human pretending to be a cat. Even so, the information given still keeps our best interests in mind. For example, the cards note that we prefer multiple cat beds and scratching posts, and invite humans to think up games for us to play — all this encourages them to leave their comfort zones in order to please us. There’s even a card on “The Midnight Crazies,” which pretty much gives us free reign to create as much havoc as we want in the middle of the night! And of course there’s the other necessary stuff like litter, food and health concerns. While it’s not a comprehensive cat care manual (the included booklet has some suggestions to find more in-depth info), this is a nice, easy way for humans to ease into the joys of cat companionship.

Homer’s Odyssey

The cats written about by human authors fall into two general categories: the ordinary cat made special by the craft of the author (i.e., My Cat Spit McGee and The Cat Who Came for Christmas), or the cat who is truly something special (i.e., The Cat Who Went to Paris). Not only does Homer, the blind cat of Homer’s Odyssey fall into the latter category, he is perhaps the most unique cat whose story has ever been told. While it’s true that a blind cat uses its other senses to compensate for its lack of vision (all sightless creatures do this, even blind humans), Homer takes his abilities to an almost otherworldly level. Yes, I’ve caught a small fruit fly by jumping and snapping it in my jaws (and it was yummy, thank-you-very-much!), but blind Homer, a cat even smaller than I am, can jump five feet in the air to catch a fly! I can smell an open can of salmon from the dining room; Homer can smell an unopened can of tuna that’s sitting in the cupboard… and pull it out onto the kitchen counter. I growl at smoke alarms that beep when they need a new battery. Homer (normally just about the friendliest cat ever born) growls at a prowler he can’t even see — and attacks him!

Author Gwen Cooper had no idea what she was getting into when she adopted Homer. She just knew that she was taking in a blind, black kitten that was almost guaranteed to create havoc in her single, twenty-something lifestyle. After all, she already had two cats — one more was bound to make her the crazy cat lady amongst her peers. And Homer did turn her life upside down — because he showed her that even while sacrificing some things, life contained far more possibilities than she ever imagined. Homer took Cooper on an odyssey that went from Florida to New York City, from a dead-end career to a new life, and ultimately opened her eyes to relationships in a way that brought her the love of her life. Along the way, Homer has also enhanced the lives of almost everyone Cooper befriends. Not only is Homer an amazing cat, this is a wonderful cat-human memoir.

Buckley’s Story

“When the student is ready,” some human once said, “the teacher will appear.” Buckley came into Ingrid King‘s life at just the right time. A sensitive and caring (not to mention cat-loving) soul, Ms. King had settled into a life that was comfortable and nice, but not everything that it could be. Through the exuberance of Buckley’s strong personality, she was encouraged to break out of her rut and set her life and career in a new direction.

Actually, it was no surprise to me that Buckley could do all of this for Ms. King because Buckley was a tortoiseshell cat, and anyone who has ever lived with a tortie knows the kind of drive they have! And Buckley needed more tortitude than your average cat because of her many physical challenges — a gimpy leg, a chronic, painful mouth inflammation and heart problems among them. If she was able to live with these problems with enthusiasm and grace, then managing Ms. King must have been easy by comparison. The one surprising thing to me was that Ms. King already had a tortie, Amber, when Buckley came into her life, but the two of them not only managed to live together, but became close companions. That was a lot of tortitude for one house. With those two running things at home, no wonder Ms. King was able to start her own business as a Reiki healer.

Yes, the book has a sad end, as Buckley’s health problems inevitably doomed her to a briefer life than most indoor kitties. But it’s an inspiring story for any humans who have ever wanted to do something special with their life — if only they would listen to their cats, then maybe they could figure out how!

The Cat Who Came for Christmas

There are book about cats by passionate cat lovers and cat books by converted cat haters, but I think Cleveland Amory is unique as a cat author in that he was an animal lover who was utterly clueless about cats until one came into his life. And even after he had lived with his cat for quite a long time, he was pretty clueless (as he confesses in this book). This first volume in Amory’s classic trilogy introduces us to Polar Bear, and I quite sympathize with the hard work this former stray had to go through to train the author. Amory was under the impression that with persistence, a cat would do anything he might have reasonably expected a dog to do. It was up to Polar Bear to make it clear that a) cats do not come when commanded, but they might show up when requested, b) cats do not take well to travel, c) cats would rather starve than eat unappealing diet food, and a host of other feline rules and regulations that decidedly did not come naturally to Amory. And Polar Bear had to learn a few compromises along the way, too — for example, as someone involved in animal activism and rescue, Amory would often bring home some stray, needy creature. Polar Bear had to learn how to cope with that. You also get to hear about some of the early days of the animal protection movement (Amory was founder of the Fund for Animals). Although Amory has a habit of rambling (something not uncommon for authors of his era), this book is full of charm, and even sweetness — not a small accomplishment for a slightly cranky cat and his curmudgeonly human.