Customer Reviews

The Quintessential Cat

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This wonderful book is a must for any cat enthusiast. It has a wealth of information on everything from cat related literature, to films, to famous cats and most popular cat names. It is peppered with a variety of cute and interesting quotes, poems, legends and superstitions. Impossible not to enjoy! I would give it five well deserved stars.

Everyone who lives with cats has stories about these mysterious creatures, and "The Quintessential Cat" attempts to distill the essential feline essence from these stories, with an intermingling of miscellaneous breed facts, and an abundance of anecdotes about show business cats. I would have preferred more photographs, especially of the breeds, but the pictures Ms. Altman chooses are interesting.

It's amazing how well cats and authors get along--everyone from Colette to Ernest Hemingway. Emily Dickinson wrote a poem, "She Sights a Bird" that begins: "She sights a Bird--she chuckles--/ She flattens--then she crawls--/ She runs without the look of feet--/ Her eyes increase to Balls--"

Some of the spookiest stories involve cats who seem to be able to foretell disasters, especially earthquakes, but also German bombing missions in war-torn London. Another cat moved her kittens to a safer location a few hours before a huge rock crashed through the office window where she resided. Cats also seem to have a talent called `psi-trailing' where some of them can return to homes hundreds of miles from their current location.

"The Quintessential Cat" isn't precisely an encyclopedia of cats, nor is it a cat care manual. Its 289 pages invite the reader to browse for a story or poem. In fact, it makes nice bedtime reading, if you scrupulously avoid the author's occasional turn into the gruesome, especially when speaking of the European Middle Ages.