The books in Bloomsbury's Object Lessons series (Hyphen; Sock) are endlessly delightful, beautifully designed, and full of unexpected wisdom about ordinary things. 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 opens, of course, with the age-old debate: cats vs. dogs. She and her partner, Steven, moved to a house with a yard, and people kept asking her if they would get a dog. She demurred, insisting, "Toby and Gus would hate us." Toby and Gus were their cats, each partner having brought one of the boys into their blended family, and they were opposites in many ways: "Gus is a cozy boy; Toby is a maniac. (They thus represent the two genders of cat.)"
Cat people will immediately recognize these personalities and van Laer's wryly affectionate tone, which she carries throughout, whether writing about her "little fluffernutter" or citing statistics about cats in the shelter system. 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. And while Cat maintains its singular focus, van Laer uses her pets to consider bigger questions like what constitutes happiness and whether to have a child, an approach readers of all kinds--even those who prefer dogs--will appreciate. --Sara Beth West, freelance reviewer and librarian