The Natural Cat: The Comprehensive Guide to Optimum Care by Anitra Frazier and Norma Eckroate

I wanted to get a cat. I knew nothing about cats. Picked up this book at the B&N and proceeded to read it in two days. It’s huge. It focuses on a more natural approach to caring for cats and how to better interact with them. There was talk of magical kisses and telepathic communication. I should have known this book was mostly bullshit written by a crazy cat lady. When the book wasn’t talking about how to blink speak ‘I love you’ to your cats, it was dedicated to how to avoid getting bit and what kind of diseases your cat will get.

I thought I had a pretty good grasp of what to look for, so we headed off to the shelter. Where a blue russian cat proceeded to bit the living shit out of my hand without warning. Hmm…the book recommended if you get bit to instead of pulling your hand away, push it further into the cats mouth because they won’t expect their prey to want to go further into their mouth and then they’ll let go without piercing the skin. The searing pain of four needle sharp teeth trying to get to bone made me forget that awesome tidbit so I yanked my hand back to my body.

This book also claims that when a cat sees its reflection in a mirror, its senses of hearing and smell will be too keen to allow it to believe there’s another cat in the room. When I brought home the two cutie cats I eventually picked out that didn’t try to kill me, the one sat in front of my full length closet mirrors looking behind the doors to find the other cat it was staring at. While the other one upon seeing his reflection, head butted the mirror with a sickening thud, not once, but twice, before running into the closet and hiding for the next seven hours.

This book has great advice for how to make your own raw food and what suppliments to use for the cats. But it doesn’t offer practical advise for someone who’s never owned cats before and knows nothing about them. It left out the chapters on “what to do if you are bitten and it traumatizes you so badly you can’t take care of future cats you get” or “how to get over a broken heart because you had to return the good cats to the shelter.”

Lesson learned: Don’t read stupid books like this. Just go get a cute cat that lets you hold it and then look up what you need to know on the internet.