How do humans live near big cats&;tigers, leopards, and lions&;that may or may not be predatory? Though they are popularly known as &;man eaters,&; this new book by anthropologist Nayanika Mathur reframes them as cats that have gone off the straight path to become &;crooked.&; Her firsthand account of living with crooked cats in India lays bare the peculiar atmosphere of terror these encounters create, reinforced by rumors, anger, humor, myths, conspiracy theories, and the making of &;celebrity&; cats.
There are various theories of why and how a big cat turns to eating people, and Mathur lays out the dominant ideas offered on the basis of fifteen years of research in India. These vary from the effects of climate change and habitat loss to history and politics. There is no firm explanation for why specific big cats turn on humans, even from the scientists who study animal behavior. Detailing the beastly tales emerging from the uncertainty created by the presence and actions of crooked cats, this book offers startling new insights into both the governance of nonhumans and their deep entanglements with humans.
Beautifully detailed in its portrayal of India&;s places, people, and animals, Crooked Cats sheds light on how we understand nonhuman animals, the hidden impacts of the climate crisis, and changing human-nonhuman relations in the Anthropocene.
Industry Reviews
"In this captivating book, Mathur offers a sensitive examination of ordinary ethical struggle with cruelties and injustices spawned by human domination of the earth. She writes gripping stories of big cats, mostly from within the villages and towns of Himalayan north India, to bridge the different ways in which the global climate crisis has been imagined, understood, and explained. This is precisely the bridge that must be crossed to reach solutions that are locally meaningful and globally just." * K. Sivaramakrishnan, Yale University *
"At a time when scholarship is highlighting the phenomenon of extinction, Mathur offers an important intervention that redirects attention from this accelerating absence by focusing instead on imaginatively constituted interactions between humans and animals under threat. Introducing many innovative, intriguing, and witty concepts, Crooked Cats is a distinctive contribution to the ongoing and ever-evolving conversation about human-animal conflict and coexistence." * Kath Weston, University of Virginia *
"While Mathur focuses on personal experience of an unusual occurrence, her persuasive arguments, with supporting resources and notes, successfully connect the observed phenomena to issues of interest to many... Highly recommended." * Choice *
"Nayanika Mathur's Crooked Cats: Beastly Encounters in the Anthropocene is a hard-hitting argument by a political scientist about the cultural (both human and leopard) and institutional ways in which big cats, particularly leopards, cohabit with humans in India. The book is a fascinating look at the political ecology of human-eating big cats and the responses of humans from the relatively powerless to the more powerful as mediated through governmental bureaucracy." * Oryx *
