Book Review: The House of Thirty Cats

A Book You Can Buy From Me

Book Title: The House of Thirty Cats

Author: Mary Calhoun

Date: 1965, 1970

Publisher: Harper & Row (1965), Pocket Books (1970)

Length: 214 pages

ISBN: 067142064X

Illustrations: pencil drawings by Mary Chalmers

Quote: "You can still have a house of many cats!"

Once upon a saner time, back when I was a child, this sweet little children's story was the complete guide to owning cats, helping cat hoarders, and dealing with cat haters. What's changed is that too many people failed to read the book, and too many communities listened to the cat haters.

Miss Tabitha Henshaw is a kind old lady who's getting just slightly "strange" after years of living alone and feeding stray cats. About thirty of the cats are pets, although only three old ones and the mothers of new kittens live in the house.

Only one cat is a troublemaker, and although today any vet would recommend neutering as the cure for all his personality defects, Miss Tabitha can only try to modify his behavior with love and indulgence. This leads to fights, detonates the cat hater, and motivates the town council to decide that Miss Tabitha must relocate the cats or let them be put down.

Sarah, the child heroine, tries hard to place cats with compatible people. (Her forming friendships with different kinds of people in her community is the real focus of the story.) In the end, however, the neighbors realize that the best thing for everyone is to leave Miss Tabitha and her cats in peace, especially now that they have human friends of all ages committed to keeping a neighborly eye on Miss Tabitha.

This book is warmly recommended--not only as a memory of the way Americans used to behave, but as a vision of the way we could and should behave now. Non-interference, rather than trying to make other people fit into our idea of well-being, is the key to peace.

(Pause for squeals from the Humane Pet Genocide Society: "Ooohhh, ooohhh, but those cats haven't been surgically sterilized!" The position of this web site is that there are valid medical reasons why cats should be sterilized. We regretfully remember a Cat Sanctuary that had forty cats, almost all adoptable, unaltered and living in and around one house. That's overcrowding--and we watched all of the adoptable, overcrowded, vulnerable cats succumb to an infectious disease. Overcrowded cats, like Miss Tabitha's, can benefit from a little herd-thinning by adoption and selective sterilization. However, we believe that across-the-board surgical sterilization is a valid plan, not for any natural animal, but only for cat haters.)

To buy it online, send $5 for the book, $5 for shipping, $1 per online payment, and Mary Calhoun (still living, according to the Harper web page) or her favorite charity will receive $1. (Yes, many people who are 91 years old still have favorite charities.) You may find a better bargain on Amazon but other dealers won't be paying Calhoun. I wasn't able to open what's alleged to be her web page; that means that payment will have to be forwarded from Harper via real mail, which will take longer, unless somebody out there can find her online.