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A review by octavia_cade
Urban Tails: Inside the Hidden World of Alley Cats by Knox
emotional
sad
fast-paced
3.0
The small community of street cats photographed here live in a colony and are fed by the authors, who try to catch them, have them neutered and vaccinated, and then either find them homes or release them as part of the catch-spay-release programme that's going on in Atlanta. They're ordinary moggies made special by the ongoing observations of their lives, which Knox captures in a series of mostly pleasant photographs (there's the odd one of a sick or dead animal, which can be distressing, although in fairness they do warn you of this in the introduction).
Some of the cats here are given little profiles of their lives and personalities, but this book is 90% pictures. And honestly, given that the text is white on a black background, which tends to give me headaches, I'm okay with that. It's awful to read about how many of them have terrible deaths, though - especially those attacked by coyotes. I've just read a picture book on coyotes - one of the Smithsonian's Backyard books - and the main character there is hunting for his dinner and readers are clearly expected to sympathise as he goes after mice and quail. I did sympathise - but then I read this and all my sympathies are on the other furry foot. It's a horrible fact that carnivores have to kill to survive, and my vegetarian self may not like it... but it's an inescapably conflicting experience reading these two books in quick succession.
Poor moggies.
Anyway: readers who are interested in a more text-based exploration of the catch-spay-release programme, again in an American context, may appreciate Nina Malkin's memoir, Unlikely Cat Lady which I read a couple of years back and which was quite good.
Some of the cats here are given little profiles of their lives and personalities, but this book is 90% pictures. And honestly, given that the text is white on a black background, which tends to give me headaches, I'm okay with that. It's awful to read about how many of them have terrible deaths, though - especially those attacked by coyotes. I've just read a picture book on coyotes - one of the Smithsonian's Backyard books - and the main character there is hunting for his dinner and readers are clearly expected to sympathise as he goes after mice and quail. I did sympathise - but then I read this and all my sympathies are on the other furry foot. It's a horrible fact that carnivores have to kill to survive, and my vegetarian self may not like it... but it's an inescapably conflicting experience reading these two books in quick succession.
Poor moggies.
Anyway: readers who are interested in a more text-based exploration of the catch-spay-release programme, again in an American context, may appreciate Nina Malkin's memoir, Unlikely Cat Lady which I read a couple of years back and which was quite good.