Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This book gets 2 stars from me because it contained some interesting material. However, 70 pages in, I came to the following statement, "But abandoned cats do fine." This, in a book that purports to "create the best life for animals". Abandoned cats do not "do fine". They are frightened and wary and it is very hard for a stranger to capture or coax them. They wander into farmyards where they are mauled by the resident dog or attacked by the residents cats. They go into the woods where they are killed by coyotes and great horned owls. And if you live in an area where there are bobcats, the bobcats will kill them to get rid of a rival predator. Loose-running cats are also always at risk from traffic. There is no way that an abandoned cat will survive long, and its end will generally be cruel. I was appalled that a book about making life better for animals would imply that it's okay to abandon an unwanted cat, because it will "do fine". A little further on, the author has some things to say about adopting cats from a shelter, namely that it's best to adopt kittens, or if you must get an adult, get one that's been in the shelter less than 2 months. This also sends a bad message and may prevent really nice older cats from finding homes. We have four cats. One was abandoned near our place and we managed to coax her in -- and by the way, Dr. Grandin, she wasn't "doing fine"; she was starved to a skeleton and covered with ticks. The other 3 were adults when we adopted them, over a period of years, from our local shelter. Two of them had been in the shelter so long, they were out of time (one had been there 8 months). They all get along fine and socialize very well with us and each other. Over my decades of cat ownership, I've never had a cat who was so "colonized" to a shelter that it couldn't adjust very quickly to having a regular home. I'd love to know if anyone else has adopted a cat that tried to go back to the shelter where they got it. I have my doubts. Like other reviewers, I could argue with more of the book's assertions about cats and their degree of attachment to their owners, and their lack of sensitivity to our body language and tone of voice, but I won't. Instead I'll just say, read this book for some interesting things about the other types of animals, but take the cat chapter with a grain of salt.