A FIRST GUIDE TO CATS

A zoologist specializing in pets explains what house cats really need and want.

With the same insight and light touch that make his companion volume A First Guide to Dogs (2023) such a joy, Bradshaw follows Libby, a 4-year-old black-and-white feline, around for a day and a night—offering illuminating behavioral, anatomical, and psychological observations as he goes. While the author skips mention of illness and, conspicuously, reproductive organs or the removal thereof, he does marvel over feline eyes, paws, and other distinctive physical features and offers helpful hints about interpreting cat sounds and body language. Working from the crucial principle that pet cats can’t be forced but can be led, he demonstrates effective ways of introducing them to new homes, cat doors, litter boxes, and scratching posts. Bradshaw also describes different sorts of simple cat toys, including a clever “puzzle feeder” made from a plastic soda bottle full of treats that provides “a good way of giving a cat all the fun of hunting but without anything having to die,” and, speaking of which, dispels several myths: No, those freshly killed mice or birds aren’t meant to be “presents.” In Elsom’s informally drawn grayscale illustrations Libby’s owner, Miss Lewis, is light-skinned but has both an adopted daughter and neighbors of Indian descent.

A winning combination of enlightening facts and practical advice for young pet owners.