Description: Drawing from a life shared with her partner and their cats, Rebecca van Laer shows that cats' supposed faults - their unreliability, laziness, and irreverence - are central to the joy of being a "cat person."
Brief description: Christopher Schaberg is Director of the Program in Public Scholarship at Washington University in St. Louis, USA, and the author of The Textual Life of Airports (2012), The End of Airports (2015), Airportness (2017), The Work of Literature in an Age of Post-Truth (2018), Searching for the Anthropocene (2019), Pedagogy of the Depressed (2021), and Adventure: An Argument for Limits (2023), all published by Bloomsbury. He is also the founding co-editor (with Ian Bogost) of Bloomsbury's Object Lessons book series.
Review Quotes:
"Cat is a poignant and playful meditation on cats ... What sets Cat apart is its delightful blend of memoir, philosophy, pop culture, and even fiction, with charming made-up feline histories. Few cat books are as artful, honest, and intimate as this one. Anyone who has experienced the cat-human bond will find something to love in this literary gem." --Rain Taxi
"A little book chock-full of all things feline." --Best Friends "For anyone who's ever watched a cat nap in sunlight and felt something stir-a reading experience both gentle and sharp." --Chronogram "Cat is a quick but deeply satisfying read. It's not just charming, or informative, or funny, or well-researched - it's also beautifully written, with lines and paragraphs that sing with their own music." --Hippocampus Magazine "Van Laer's keen eye captures the ineffable charm of our feline friends and investigates humankind's relationship to cats with great insight and tenderness. A stirring and deeply profound look at what it means to love and lose, and a must-read for cat people and the cat-curious alike." --Gina Chung, author of Sea Change and Green Frog "Rebecca van Laer's feline marvel is at once cozy and mind-expanding. If you've never felt a connection with cats before, you will after reading this brilliant book." --Henry Hoke, author of Open Throat "In tender, incisive prose, van Laer examines the ways that she has negotiated her relationship to herself, the world around her, and the ever-mysterious wildness she invites in, revealing the deep and abiding love that is the foundation of what it takes to be in true communion with other life. Let Cat curl up and rest in your heart."" --Talia Lakshmi Kolluri, author of What We Fed To The Manticore "Rebecca van Laer's Cat is encyclopedia entry and memoir in one, dabbling in the general history and domestication of cats, and the specific history of her cats and the lives they have lived ... Van Laer's stance is always personal, an act of curiosity driven by her deep love for her pets. When tragedy strikes, she shares the raw edges of her sadness and anxiety with a vulnerability any animal lover will appreciate." --Shelf Awareness