23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Gooooooood book! Good book!!, February 19, 2004
This review is from: Feline Behavior, 2e (Paperback)
As a volunteer at our local Humane Society, I've wanted so bad to help with the cats that are unadoptable. Behavior is the greatest challenge and obstical that cats must prove themselves capable of to reach the goal of somebody to love them. I really want to move into this department to do all I can to ensure all the cats possible get the chance to go home. This book is one great start!! It's very technical however. And I find alot of words (usually anatomical) that I must reference to fully understand. But hey, that's called learning!!!!!!!!!
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Useful for the layperson working with a large number of cats, October 10, 2011
This review is from: Feline Behavior, 2e (Paperback)
About me: I'm not a vet, but I have a technical background and I'm essentially a volunteer "feline occupational therapist" and "used cat salesman" for a relatively large local shelter. In other words, a few hours a week I interact with shelter cats to reduce their stress level (so they are less likely to become immunocompromised) and keep them socialized. I also log behavioral observations for the professional staff behaviorists, and try to help potential adopters find the sort of feline friend that they're looking for.
About the book: This is a scientific research monograph for vets and not a simplified "10 tips for what to do if your cat won't use the litter box" self-help book. If you are not looking for scientific literature with very specific technical descriptions of cat behavior and 100+ journal citations per chapter then you will not appreciate this book. With that said, you really do not need to have a veterinary medical degree to understand most of it.
Given the work I'm doing with cats and my excessively intellectual approach to everything, this book is exactly what I was looking for. I borrowed it from the nearest vet school library via interlibrary loan and, due to its typical scientific publication pricing, didn't think that I'd actually end up buying it, but after reading maybe half of it I was quite confident that I could make good long-term use of it. Since I have to take the library copy back tomorrow, I ordered my own copy from Amazon a few hours ago.
While the book is mainly targeted toward small animal veterinarians, the amount of medical jargon is pretty manageable for the layperson and the author does define some of the most obscure terms inline in the text. The jargon isn't likely to bother any layperson who is at least scientifically literate enough to figure out how to occasionally look up technical definitions and otherwise do some of their own research. Basically, if you have taken a few college level science classes or have some similar level of experience you will find the vast majority of the book quite comprehensible.
If you are a vet, my guess is that (in addition to everything else) you'll find this book quite useful for pharmaceutical treatment of feline psychological and neurological problems since the author frequently mentions applicable pharmaceutical treatments along with the expected citations necessary for further research. If you are not a vet, please do not read this and start begging your vet for Prozac instead of trusting their advice.
So, while I would not recommend this book to someone who just wants to solve a specific behavior problem with their own cat(s), the book is extremely helpful for anyone experienced in dealing with cats who works with at least one new unfamiliar cat every few days and has a serious desire to understand cat behavior in technical detail.
The only "problem" with the book is that it isn't an encyclopedia with extreme detail on every subject mentioned. It seems as if 1/3rd of the pages are full of just citations. Often some narrow topic will be given only one sentence in the text, followed by a citation. Again though, this is perfectly normal for this type of book, though it does mean that unless you have access to an adequate library or scientific literature database then you will have trouble researching some things that might grab your interest. With that said, there is still more than enough useful information in the book even if you never look up any references.
Now I just hope that the local vets and feline behaviorists won't curse the public availability of books like this after I annoy them with lots of obscure questions.
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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A comprehensive book about feline behavior, April 7, 2010
This review is from: Feline Behavior, 2e (Paperback)
This is a must-read if you work with cats. It contains everything you ever wanted to know about feline behavior.
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