Because the Cat Purrs

How We Relate to Other Species and Why It Matters

By: Janet Lembke

Narrated by: Celeste Lawson

We share our lives, for better or worse, with a multitude of animals: white-tailed deer and white-tailed eagles, hens and wrens, frogs and guppies, and, last but hardly least, bugs and bacteria. For the most part, we drift along separately, with neither man nor animal affecting the other's way of life. Sometimes, however, we fall in love - as in the case of the cat in the title - or otherwise encounter our animal neighbors in ways that change both of us. Lembke challenges her listeners to consider the idea that all creatures are conscious, with the ability to make choices, exercise awareness, and seek pleasure while shunning pain.

Rarely has a book of natural history covered such a broad range of subjects, from the everyday bargains we make with our pets and other domestic creatures to descriptions of bungee-cord snail sex and the purpose of a honeybee's sting. Lembke explores the evolution of her subjects, and draws on literature and myth to paint gorgeous, wide-ranging portraits of everyday (and more unusual) encounters, such as that of a gardener and a groundhog, or a chicken egg and Augustus Caesar's wife. This is a sensitive and timely appraisal of how we treat the creatures we share our planet with - and how we ought to. It is a book that no lover of intelligent writing about the natural world will want to miss.

©2008 Janet Lembke (P)2012 Audible, Inc.

Monotone

Couldn’t get past 10 minutes with the drab voice. Sounded like Siri reading to me.

not really about cats

a bit disappointed because I thought this book was about cats and it really isnt.

Mary Wilson

The reader drones on and on, like the worse professor ever. A very uninteresting documentary, not a story. Very little about cats at all. It covers mold pretty well!

Not for animal lovers

I'm passionate about animals, I don't eat meat and won't kill anything if I can help it. I also read a lot of books about all kinds of creatures, written by behavioralists, zoologists or just fellow animal nuts whose love for the subject is obvious. This is not that kind of book. It has a lot of fascinating tidbits about biology but it's clear that the author is one of those people who declare themselves animal lovers but aren't. Not really. I've had the same conversation many times throughout my life, when someone says they love dogs and then tell you how they gave up a companion of many years when their boyfriend du jour was allergic, or how they tried to have their cat put down because "it" peed on the sofa. The author discusses hunting strategies, recipes and ways to murder "pests." She talks about abandoning a pet turtle because she was tired of cleaning after him and how he probably died in the wild. She talks about using deadly traps on mice or how she had a groundhog murdered because she was a nuisance. I'm not a vegetarian nazi and I'm even OK with hunting, I just can't tolerate hypocrisy. Not about animals.

Author and Narrator Did Not Deliver

The title of my review sums it up. Like many listeners/readers, I expected something different than a description of how a select group of creatures evolved to live around humans. Such a description is not necessarily bad, it's just not what the title and cover suggest.

While I commend the author for her curiosity, this is her primary redeeming quality. She did not even really explain "why it matters", just how it happened that certain creatures evolved to live around humans. Also, she ends with a poetic statement of how animals experience pain and suffer and in the same (or similar) way that we do. All of her self described behavior in this book indicates that she doesn't care a whit about any creature besides humans. She spent her entire life bending nature to her whim and treating animals cruelly. She's thrown baby mice into the garbage, suffocated pollinating bees for her own fancy, and abandoned a pet turtle outside because she didn't want to take care of it. She killed carpenter bee hives seemingly because she thought they were pests, even though she knew that they're also pollinators, and then ended the chapter saying how no one researches the "poor carpenter bee". This is in addition the poisoning innumerable plants and animals which she considered "pests", without showing any interest in growing native plants or attracting helpful animals into her garden.

She had no comments about how a neighbor "beat [a groundhog] to death" or how another one was flooded out of its burrow so the husband could shoot it. When a storm brought down a large tree in her yard, she had many lovely comments about how birds and squirrels used it as "a playground". That oak was probably their home, or at least the home of many other animals - no comments about how they might actually be distressed instead of playful or how they evolved to make new homes.

The above are just a few big examples of how terribly the author treated animals. She's shown no indication of actually believing that their lives have value, or of caring about causing pain and suffering. Only humans seem to be worthy of such empathy.

This review is coming from someone who supports hunting and farming. There are ways to do both humanely. Hunting was the only area where she described how that actually helps wildlife populations.

The narrator was no help to the story. She was monotonous and sounded bored. The female version of the "Milk!" narrator. Seriously, it was like listening to the most boring college lecture.

An overall dud of a book.