Review: Fun, unique read with a great message!
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 06 15, 2011
Obviously by reading the synopsis you can tell this book is pretty unique, since over half of the story is told from the cats' point of view. I wasn't sure what to expect going into it but I wanted to give it a try since it's such a different concept. The story revolves around a "tribe" of feral cats living out in the country. The people that used to live at the house are long gone so they don't have to worry about any interference or cruelty from the "two-legs". The eldest of the tribe is Tia and so all of the other cats look to her for wisdom and advice. Her closest friend, Bella, is a lot more cynical in her thinking and has somewhat of a temper. Most of the cats on the farm have never known or seen a two-legs in their life, but suddenly they have company; Susan and her husband Rob decide to move onto the farm and fix it up. Little do they know that it already has occupants, and a lot of them at that.Like I said, the two main cat characters are Tia and Bella; they are best friends but also very different in personality. Maybe it's due to her age, but Tia is more mellow and open to new ideas, whereas Bella is more temperamental and opposed to change. She doesn't want anything to do with the two-legs, convinced that they mean to kill and eat all of them. There are a lot of secondary cat characters, but I think one of the most important is Daca, who used to be a domesticated cat; she ended up with the tribe after her owner died and she was subsequently thrown out on the side of the road to fend for herself. She acts as sort of a mediator between the rest of the tribe and the humans, because she knows that not all humans are bad and mean to harm them. As for the human characters, Susan is the point of focus. She is a major animal lover who has worked with feral cats before, removing them from a bad environment and helping them get adopted. Unfortunately in those cases, most of the cats are not adoptable because they are so wild, so when Susan discovers all of the cats on the premises she decides to handle things on her own. Her mom helps her out a lot with all of her plans and I swear her husband is a Saint, he just agreed with whatever Susan wanted to do and helped her out when he could even though he's not a cat person.  I liked the characters in this book, I just didn't love them. I had trouble forming connections with them which made the book a little difficult to get into.I thought some of the cats' observations were clever. Especially about the water hose, they thought it was a snake and they couldn't understand why Susan grabbed it and dragged it around the yard every day (and why it would let itself be dragged around!) and why it spit out water. I thought they were so cute, because you can imagine that may be what cats actually think is happening.This book also brought some awareness to organizations such as PAWS (Pets Are Worth Saving) which is great. I love animals and hate to see them mistreated or in danger of being euthanized. In the book Susan takes matters into her own hands by deciding to care for the cats herself, feeding them, getting them vet check-ups, and spaying/neutering them all to control the population. I don't even want to imagine what something like that would cost, even with a vet discount, but I think any animal lover would probably at least try to save all of these animals too in any way they could.Overall I liked this book, I just didn't love it. I couldn't seem to really get into the story, at least in the first half. It was a cute, unique read though, giving you a look at the world from an entirely different perspective. I think animal lovers (especially cat lovers) will really enjoy this book.