The Big New Yorker Book of Cats is exactly what you'd expect: a delightful, entertaining, insightful look at the crazy, wonderful world of cats and humans, beautifully illustrated with cartoons, reproduced cover art, photographs and drawings of cats from the magazine's archives. The text is a combination of articles, fiction and poetry from writers such as Jamaica Kincaid, John Updike, Susan Orlean and Roald Dahl.
Need to trap a cat? E.B. White provides tongue-in-cheek instructions on how to build a wooden cat trap. Want to understand cat language? Vicki Hearne gives an in-depth analysis of why not to use cats in research projects: "The trouble is that as soon as [cats] figure out that the researcher or technician wants them to push the lever they stop doing it; some of them will starve to death rather than do it." There are cats who live in bookstores and strays who live in alleyways, cats who stalk penguins or are stalked by dogs, cats that look like leopards, an old lady who turns into a cat and a man who probably eats his cat (no worries, that one's fiction).
Whether told from the cat's perspective or the loving human companion's, the contents of this compilation will entertain and amuse cat lovers. Even those who've looked adversely toward cats may change their minds after indulging in this bowlful of cat cream. --Lee E. Cart, freelance writer and book reviewer