A sweeping and fascinating history of cat-human relationships.
For more than 10,000 years, cats have prowled at the edges of human life. But, starting only a few decades ago, hundreds of millions of them became pets. In Cats, Rod Phillips shares a sweeping cultural and social history of felines, tracing their shifting place across societies and centuries, from ancient Egypts revered hunters to Europes suspected familiars of witches and from shipboard rodent controllers to cherished internet icons.
Phillips illustrates how cats have always occupied spaces both familiar and mysterious and how their perceived independence and disruptive nature—and their associations with women, the supernatural, and outsiders—have shaped humans attitudes toward these fascinating creatures. Cats have been lauded as companions and vermin-killers, reviled as threats to moral and ecological order, and cherished for the very qualities that make them hard to control. This richly textured portrait of cats explores their significance in religion, politics, gender, literature, warfare, and pop culture. It also provides profound insights into our relationships with other animals, especially dogs and rodents.
The many roles that cats have played throughout history illuminate a variety of contradictions in humans perceptions of them: as affectionate yet aloof, adorable and evil, ordinary and exceptional. This book is the definitive story of the feline presence in human history—an elegant study of how we live with animals whom we see as living by their own rules.
Industry Reviews
A readable and clear-sighted book that tracks the histories of cats of all stripes from their earliest origins to their ubiquitous presence in twenty-first-century social media. Engagingly written, the book tells the story of the ups and downs in cat-human relationships through a wealth of detailed evidence and fascinating first-hand accounts.
—Jane Hamlett, coauthor of Pet Revolution: Animals and the Making of Modern British Life
Cats tells the story of changing cat-human relations in an engaging and sophisticated manner, starting with domestication and ending in the present day. The chapters are like a series of learned lectures, where readers will enjoy both a grand narrative and entertaining illustrations.
—Michael Worboys, coauthor of The Invention of the Modern Dog: Breed and Blood in Victorian Britain
Paradoxically, the ubiquity of cats has restricted rather than compelled interrogations into the origins and characteristics of this specific human-animal relationship. Their everywhere-ness has somehow made us incurious. Phillipss book comprehensively corrects this major oversight in a fascinating and deeply satisfying manner. You love cats, and now you know why.
—Greger Larson, University of Oxford
