Tortie Tuesday Book Review: Good Kitty (The Cat Owner's Problem Solver)

A Fair Trade Book



Title: Good Kitty was on the cover of the book I read in 2008. Amazon currently shows the title as The Cat Owner's Problem Solver. Same subtitle, same images, same concept...

Author: Margaret H. Bonham

Author's blog page: here (last updated in 2009, and author has not Twittered lately either)

Date: 2008

Publisher: T.F.H. Publications

ISBN: 978-0-7938-0650-8

Length: 176 pages including index and many pictures

Illustrations: color photos mostly from Shutterstock

Quote: "By learning your cat's natural behavior, you can think like a cat and even anticipate what may be causing her to do some of the bothersome and odd things she does."

Many of the "bothersome and odd" things cats do, according to this book, are reactions to the unnatural condition of living in humans' homes. Margaret Bonham, nevertheless, recommends keeping cats indoors. According to recent statistics, about half of all Americans live in overcrowded urban environments that are actually about as toxic to humans as they are to cats and dogs. Bonham's purpose in writing this book is not to encourage humans to find (or make) healthier places for themselves and their pets to live, but to help readers cope with their toxic environments.

When I Googled this book to find the blog page, I found a review by someone who was annoyed by the way Bonham assumes that the reader's cat is a "she." (I once actually lived with a cat (a "she") who noticed, and looked at me strangely, when I'd misidentified a male kitten as "she.") I find the assumption that the reader lives, with or without pets, in an urban apartment, more annoying. However, the book still contains useful information, not to mention appealing pictures, so it's worth buying anyway.

If you're determined to subject yourself to urban life, The Cat Owner's Problem Solver will be invaluable to you. It's full of little tricks that make coping easier, like building special pieces of furniture for Kitty to climb on and using sprays and noises to discourage her, or him, from climbing on the table.

If you're trying to live in a healthier environment, The Cat Owner's Problem Solver may still be useful to you. Humans who live with outdoor cats don't need the majority of the tricks discussed in this book, although some of them, like the tips on training a cat to think of its carrying case as its "safe place" to hide and snooze, may be valuable. On the other hand it's easier to overlook the medical problems of outdoor cats, so everyone who likes cats will want to read the list of odd behaviors that are likely to appear when a cat is ill.

Several tricks Bonham discusses involve using scent to shape cats' behavior. 

There are points on which I disagree with Bonham, such as her discussion of discouraging cats, not just from bringing in dead mice, but from being outdoors or hunting anything at all. Bonham plays up to rat lovers: "the best thing to do is to keep [your cat] inside" and "mice are now controlled by chemical means." I once lived in a house whose owners tried to control mice by chemical means. I've also lived in neighborhoods that banned cats from patrolling the streets. By far the most humane way to keep mice and rats from destroying your home is to encourage cats to prowl. This is the domestic cat's reason for existence. Even if a cat plays with a mouse for half an hour, the mouse suffers less than it would if trapped or poisoned by humans. So, how to discourage gross-out "gifts" of freshly killed or partly eaten vermin? That's another article.

There are other points on which I think Bonham deserves extra credit, like appealing to family members who may drag their feet when the reader proposes to adopt a cat. The Cat Owner's Problem Solver alternately presents logical explanations of how to correct cat behavior problems, and photos of just how cute cats can be.

If Bonham had only kept from stereotyping readers as apartment dwellers who live with only spayed female cats, this small paperback book would get ten points out of ten.

It was too new to be a Fair Trade Book for ten years, but now it is one. To buy The Cat Owner's Problem Solver here, send $5 per book, $5 per package, and $1 per online payment to the appropriate address from the bottom of the screen. (That e-mail address is not a Paypal address; it's the address from which you get the correct, current Paypal address by mentioning what you're paying for.) A few other books will fit in the package for $5, including Bonham's Why Do Cats...and/or her dog books and/or even her science fiction, and if you order vintage books by the writer known as Margaret Bonham, Margaret H. Bonham, or M.H. Bonham, we'll send $1 per book to Bonham or a charity of her choice.