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5.0 out of 5 stars
Great read!, April 9 2001
The negative review of Particularly Cats is pretty funny; it's clear the reviewer was expecting just a book about cats, not a Doris Lessing book about cats. I'm sure by now she's assuaged her emotions with the standard sentimental fare she was looking for. DL is not to everyone's taste. As for me, I found this book very absorbing. DL expertly observes the lives of several cats she has owned, describing and interpreting their unique temperaments and actions. Interwoven with the narrative is all sorts of fascinating speculation on evolution, human (and cat) psychology, science...and I'm sure there are points floated briefly in her deceptively light prose that I missed. She never beats you over the head with her analysis, just as she never breast-beats over her emotions experienced while facing very difficult choices about her cats. Particularly Cats opens in Africa, where DL grew up, and depicts a few incidents with cats that happened on her family's farm, all in the larger ecological context of hawks and their prey, wild cats, and adders who can blind you with a spit to the eye. Why is a cat programmed to expect 2/3 of her litter to die very quickly? What happens when humans upset this balance of nature? In Lessing's (true) story, her mother one year decides she can no longer bear redressing the imbalance herself, and in a chilling scene, the task devolves on her father. Later in the book we read of the consequences of spaying or neutering, the more favored, humane, modern method of population control, and the conflicting emotions Lessing experiences as she subjects her cats to the procedure. Unlike the negative reviewer, I found Lessing's way of referring to the main characters in Particularly Cats as "grey cat" and "black cat" refreshing and amusing. Refreshing because it helps stave off cutesiness that could interfere with the tale, and amusing because "grey cat" is a very effective way of undercutting the vanity and unique beauty of the cat she refers to as "grey cat." (As for "black cat", it is merely a plain description of the cat she refers to as such.) Lessing briefly touches upon topics that beg further elaboration and research on the part of the reader. For instance, she remarks on the attitudes of some scientist friends of hers who are also cat owners, and how they change their story depending on whether they're among fellow scientists or among fellow cat owners. Observant cat owners, notes Lessing, are more advanced in the study of cat behavior and psychology than scientists, but scientists read only "important" scientific publications, not the "unscientific" cat-lover rags that contain cat-owner's surprising findings. This off-hand, throwaway remark is far-reaching in its implications...could it perhaps be extended to say that scientists in other fields pursue their study with blinders on? I don't know if she means to offer that connection, but Lessing does remark in the intro to _Mara and Dann_, after relating what for shorthand I'll call an instance of family ESP: "This sort of thing happens often in families but seldom in laboratories." Anyway, I have to say I'm a huge fan of Lessing, I loved _Particularly Cats_, and I'm not myself a cat owner. So you may take my Highly Recommended with a spoonful of salt.
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