Cats I've Known: On Love, Loss, and Being Graciously Ignored

by Katie Haegele

A collection of deeply heartfelt, humorous, and insightful stories of cats written by a true wordsmith and raconteur. From deep friendships to brief encounters, this is the story of the cats in Katie Haegele's life, or rather the story of her life in relation to the many cats she meets in Philadelphia's streets, alleys, houses, apartments, and bookstores. Through Haegele's sharp, wise, and at times hilarious gaze, we see cats for what they truly minor deities that mostly ignore the human foibles being played out around them. They accept our offerings with equanimity and occasionally bestow some nice thing on us. Haegele, author of White Elephants and Slip of the Tongue , has a unique and compelling sensibility, and it's a treat to see the world through her eyes as she shows us all the meanness, weirdness, and vulnerability of humans, against an ever-shifting backdrop of the cats we often take for granted, and who ignore us all democratically in return.

Genres: Nonfiction, Cats, Animals, Memoir, Biography, Essays

192 pages, Paperback

First published October 10, 2017

Reviews

[karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

when i first came across a listing for this book in the publisher's catalog, i got wicked excited, and then spent several months in this loop where i would forget when the pub date was, check to see if it was available, deflate with disappointment when it was not, and then lather, rinse, repeat until i stumbled upon it by chance when browsing the pet section one day, whereupon i bought it immediately.

so i don't know if my lukewarm response to it is like, inversely proportional to my anticipation of it or what, but for a book about cats, it did little to charm me. if you’re a book about cats, you already have 40% of my attention, you just gotta sustain it.



the author has certainly come into contact with a lot of cats during her life - her own, those belonging to family, friends, neighbors, or belonging to no one at all. and she remembers at least one thing about each of them, but most don’t really add up to much more than an anecdote.

bearing in mind that it was a collection of remembrances of cats from her whole life, i was prepared for the inevitable sad parts. and there were a few of those, but not nearly as many as i'd expected, mostly because the stories were frequently only a page-and-a-half long and covered very little. this isn't à la recherche du chats perdus.

some of the ‘essays’ are sweet, or touching - particularly the stories of trixie, the author's cat-companion of fourteen years, but in a lot of them, the cat's actual presence can be summed up in a single sentence: this cat lives in a bookstore i like, i lived in ireland and this cat did, too, i miss my old roommate, she had a cat, one time i went on a zine tour and stayed at someone's house. she had a cat. <---that story is particularly galling, because here's the cat-part:

To be honest, I don't remember much about those cats at all, just that the grey one was called Grayson, which I thought was cute.

insufficient cats, dude.

i have no problem with millennials thinking their lives are interesting enough to turn into a book. just don't trick me into reading it by bait-and-switching me with the promise of a collection of charming cat stories. this is memoir with occasional cats. one of the stories is about a plastic statue of a cat her grandma had.

a. plastic. cat. statue.

to be fair, some of these are true cat stories, filled with cats, and there are awwwws to be had. but overall, i'm not sure why this book is.

i mean, hooray for small presses and all that they do, but while grassroots and DIY and zinesters are all authentic and admirable ways of being and doing, there's just something artless and unfocused about this book. it's a shame, because it’s about 2/3 of the way to being good, and it just needs to be more...book-shaped.

her drawings are cute;



she gets cat posture and mannerisms,



and if she had structured this as a graphic novel it could have been really fun, but since the text is taking center stage, it needs to hook the reader, and this didn't hook me. much. if you're marketing this as a book about cats to an audience of cat-lovers, the cat needs to be what drives the story, not shoehorned in as a prop. for example, take the story of sister eustace, the author's school librarian/nun who had a pet cat that she would occasionally bring to school. the story is two-and-a-half pages long, and only one paragraph is about the actual cat, whose name is never even given. the story is mostly about how mean sister eustace was, how weird it was that she was allowed to own a cat, and then, after some general musings about nuns, the chapter abruptly ends with, I stroked her cat's fur once and it bit me.

there's certainly an audience for stories about a nun's pussy, but that one does not deliver.

it just needs direction. it feels like a party game called "list all the cats you have ever seen" that was expanded to book-length by injecting personal-detail-filler.

like i said, it's 2/3 of the way there, it just needs to be weeded a bit, quantity giving way to quality, ditching the stories that don’t work, polishing the ones that do, cats taking more of the spotlight (which is only as it should be), and it needs a better structure. the book has 43 chapters, each about a specific cat or clowder of cats. but there is also a recurring, ongoing narrative arc about the family of feral cats who were living in her backyard while she was writing this, known as (in yet another instance of semantic bleaching) "the backyard saga," which takes up four chapters, including the introduction to the collection:

introduction: the backyard saga begins
the backyard saga continues
the backyard saga: the bad mammer jammer
the backyard saga goes on and on

which is great - have your standalone cat tales, and use the unfolding present-day story as a framing device to tie the whole project together and make whatever point you wanted to make by writing this book in the first place. but it misses the mark completely - the "saga" is just another story, with no unifying component, no context, and it doesn't even function as a proper framing device structurally, because "on and on" is the penultimate story, followed by #43 Cat's Cat, a *fascinating* paragraph-long story about the author's human friend named cat who dropped acid one time and spent the night talking to beauregard, her pet cat, during which he told human-cat that his real name was Mister Sister.

and then the book ends.



with neither a bang nor a whimper but a furrowed brow of "so that's it, then?"

it turns out i am angrier than i thought i was when i sat down to write this. oops. quick - PET SHOP KITTEN PARTY!



it's not terrible, but it's not the cat book i'd been looking forward to reading for all those months. it's a medium.

come to my blog!

[Dan Mcdowell · Rating 1 out of 5]

Why so many blank black pages? Why so many terribly short essays that have very little story and the try to sum themselves up with one “deep” thought?

Katie can clearly write. A few stories really demonstrate this. But, this feels like 12 pages of quality writing surrounded with 150 pages of filler in order to call it a book.

I love supporting small press books but experiences like these make me want to reconsider.

I hate to be so critical of someone’s work, especially given that I think I relate to this author in a lot of ways. I think this would have worked for me a lot better as a longer narrative with fewer bit part cats. That said, I realize that wouldn’t sell as well.

[Miranda · Rating 3 out of 5]

I disapproved of her attitude towards some of the cats (the mama cat and kittens in her backyard, for example) and there's a slightly upsetting part where a farmer lets his old cat die slowly by starvation instead of getting it euthanized to ease its suffering. (Which I realize is pretty typical in the country, but that doesn't mean it's right or that I have to be okay with it.)

Otherwise, some of the stories were just barely about cats. I did cry a lot at Trixie's story, though. I wouldn't say it's a bad collection.

[Corinne · Rating 3 out of 5]

I appreciate what the author did- it's interesting to measure her life by the cat's she known. And the writing is well done. But the problem with this format of short essays is that I never connected with her story, or the stories of any of her cats, because each one was only a few pages.

[Robin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sweet slices of life with charming, endearing fuzzballs.

[Tyesha · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5*s I got this book in a giveaway. It's very cute. Some of the stories got me teary eyed because I love cats. There wasn't much of a conclusion to this book and that was weird. There was a beginning monologue explaining the cat stories but there is no end. It felt unfinished in a way. There were some stories that felt unnecessary or even not that much about cats. Overall, though, I enjoyed it. It was a quick read and I really enjoyed the cat doodles. If you like cats I would recommend it.

[Pamela B.]

The author says in the introduction of the book that "...the details are true to how I remember them except for the ones that are not my memories but are stories that were told to me by people I know. I want to thank them for use of those tales and ask them to forgive me for any poetic license I took in bringing them to life".
Annoying--now I don't even want to read it because I won't know what is true and what is not. If I had wanted a fiction book, I would have got one.

[Ellen Pilch · Rating 1 out of 5]

I did not like this book. I did not like the author's attitude toward cats. I thought she was a cat lover writing about cats she had loved, but it sounds like she did not like a lot of these. Also, she did not make an effort to help the ferals by getting them fixed or contacting someone who could help. I did not finish this book because I was grtting too annoyed with her attitude.

[Christa Van · Rating 3 out of 5]

A series of short essays that each feature a cat but also tells the author's story and her love and respect for cats and life in general. It seems like each encounter left a little something with the author...even if it was a casual cat relationship. Of course she has lived long term with many cats as well. An interesting way to frame some fairly mundane events presented well.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A sweet, enjoyable read about life and cats. I’m glad that my cat is a lap cat and snuggler because many of the stories were giving me all the feels. There wasn’t a sweeping conclusion, which I thought was fitting. This book is definitely written for cat people, and I think I would only recommend this to a cat person.

[David Macpherson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cats

A lovely little collection of essays that tell of the relationship between cats and humans. My 9nlt issue is that there is sone formatting problems at the very end of the book. A portion of a previous chapter is put into the last chapter

[Melissa Tasnim · Rating 5 out of 5]

I originally found this book in the non-fiction section of my local library and thought the cover art was cute. I had just lost my cat of 17 years and thought that it’d maybe help me cope with that too.
Not only was I right in that this helped me process my sweet kitty’s death but it made me laugh, tear up, and reflect on all the cats I’ve known and what each of them has taught me. If you are a cat-lover this book is absolutely for you.
Katie is funny, witty, and kind-hearted in her remarks and I feel almost like I know her (or at least the parts she wrote about) personally. This reads like stories being told from a close friend and I loved every single one. I wish I could read it for the first time all over again!

[Ray Palen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an amazing book. Not just because I share a love of cats with the author but the fact that she has almost total recall of each and every cat to ever cross her path since her childhood.

From family pets to neighborhood cats, to strays, to bookstore cats --- Katie Haegele takes the reader on a delightful journey. This short book is a quick read but an impactful one. I guarantee readers who feel the way cat lovers do will smile, laugh and cry ---sometimes simultaneously --- and not want the individual little stories about these amazing cats to ever end.

[Nina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Got this book as part of the pawsitively clawsome humble bundle. It was alright I think. I like reading about the lives of other people, and their thoughts and feelings. Especially when it involves cats. Because sometimes I do wonder I'm too obsessed by the little felines. But no, other people are just like me. However that also makes for a rather average book. Which is fine as it was easy enjoyable. Not a book I'd tell everyone to read, but one I'd selectively mention to a friend who is also a cat person.

[Lyz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I expected to like this book when I picked it up. Cats+books=win! I didn't expect to like it as much as I did. And...that one of the cats the author has known, I have also known. Morgana of New Hope I met sometime in the 90s as a teen. The description of New Hope was spot on. The small peeks into other places in the tri state area were delightfully nostalgic. I spent a few years there as a Canadian transplant in my youth and I don't often have such pleasant reminders of the charms of the place.

[Clara · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a surprisingly fast read. I was touched by the story of the author's cat Trixie because it reminded me of my own cat and the fact that she's not going to be with me forever, which is the saddest thing I can think about. The other stories are just okay, but I had hoped to find an overarching story to link them and there just wasn't one.

[M Aghazarian · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was sweet!! Little vignettes of cats. I thought I would get bored after the first few, but maybe it was the local vibe or her tone or following Joe on Instagram and thus knowing what Coco looks like and feeling like she's a celebrity, but it was a sweet cozy read.

[Chantell Petrell · Rating 4 out of 5]

The illustrations were adorable, and some of the stories were touching. Overall, I found it to be quite enjoyable.

[Pamela Sue · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short little essays, just a page or 2. Some more entertaining than others. Nice to read a couple with a few cookies for an afternoon break

[Angelina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very funny, light hearted stories! I wish I owned this.

[Marianna · Rating 3 out of 5]

An odd little book, but satisfying at the same time.

[V · Rating 3 out of 5]

very sweet

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

I grabbed this off the library shelf because it was intriguing. It’s exactly what you would expect.

[Cecil Rain · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved it. It’s a quirky cat read. I might’ve ate 3 bowls of cereal finishing it, but let’s be real, it’s a great, relaxing book.

[Allie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Insightful premise echoing my feelings about the cats I encounter; sweet stories;

[Persephone · Rating 5 out of 5]

yaaay cats

[Alessandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Adorable quick little read! The book kind of just ended and there was one short story that seemed misplaced but overall a fun cute read

[Dominique Asser · Rating 5 out of 5]

There’s something special about this book. I smiled, laughed and cried. I feel so connected to this book.