With her lighthearted yet authoritative approach, Brown helps us better understand our feline companions.
A scientist of cat behavior explores the various ways domestic cats communicate.
Brown, author of The Cat: A Natural and Cultural History, began studying cat behavior in the late 1980s while gaining her doctorate and working as a research assistant at the Anthrozoology Institute at the University of Southampton in the UK. As she notes, domestic cats descended from “shy, solitary North African wildcats” and now can be found throughout the world, including in more than 45 million households in the U.S. The author approaches her study of domestic cats from a scientific perspective, offering her firsthand observations and analysis of recent research studies in a writing style that is easily comprehendible and captivating. According to Brown, one of the cat’s primary communication tactics is marking territory through spraying and scratching. But don’t automatically yell at your cat to stop it. “Tension and conflict within the home,” she writes, “may bring on more scratching than normal as the cat feels the urge to increase their marking behavior.” Brown examines alternatives to the invasive and painful procedure of declawing, and she discusses the true purpose of meowing, noting that the rate of meowing tends to increase the longer feral cats are in the company of humans, as well as how cats use their tails and ears to express emotions. The author shares the benefits, beyond hygiene, that cats receive from grooming each other and investigates the “secret ingredient” of catnip and other plants that provide a special allure for cats. Brown also ponders the question of whether cats have personalities and discusses the “Five-Factor Scale of Domestic Cat Personality,” known as the “Feline Five,” to analyze cat temperament. As the research that Brown presents indicates, cats have made impressive strides in adapting and learning to communicate with humans.
With her lighthearted yet authoritative approach, Brown helps us better understand our feline companions.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9780593186411
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2023
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.
In which the veteran humorist enters middle age with fine snark but some trepidation as well.
Mortality is weighing on Sedaris (Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, 2017, etc.), much of it his own, professional narcissist that he is. Watching an elderly man have a bowel accident on a plane, he dreaded the day when he would be the target of teenagers’ jokes “as they raise their phones to take my picture from behind.” A skin tumor troubled him, but so did the doctor who told him he couldn’t keep it once it was removed. “But it’s my tumor,” he insisted. “I made it.” (Eventually, he found a semitrained doctor to remove and give him the lipoma, which he proceeded to feed to a turtle.) The deaths of others are much on the author’s mind as well: He contemplates the suicide of his sister Tiffany, his alcoholic mother’s death, and his cantankerous father’s erratic behavior. His contemplation of his mother’s drinking—and his family’s denial of it—makes for some of the most poignant writing in the book: The sound of her putting ice in a rocks glass increasingly sounded “like a trigger being cocked.” Despite the gloom, however, frivolity still abides in the Sedaris clan. His summer home on the Carolina coast, which he dubbed the Sea Section, overspills with irreverent bantering between him and his siblings as his long-suffering partner, Hugh, looks on. Sedaris hasn’t lost his capacity for bemused observations of the people he encounters. For example, cashiers who say “have a blessed day” make him feel “like you’ve been sprayed against your will with God cologne.” But bad news has sharpened the author’s humor, and this book is defined by a persistent, engaging bafflement over how seriously or unseriously to take life when it’s increasingly filled with Trump and funerals.
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-39238-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
PROFILES
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