Cat

(Paperback)

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Description

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.

Rebecca van Laer and her partner purchase a home and move in with their senior cats, Toby and Gus. Their loved ones see this as a step toward an inevitable futurefirst comes the house, then a dog, then a child. But what if they are just cat people

Moving between memoir, philosophy, and pop culture, Cat is a playful and tender meditation on cats and their people. Van Laer considers cats role in her personal narrative, where they are mascots of laziness and lawlessness, and in cultural narratives, where they appear as feminine, anarchic, and maladapted, especially in comparison to dogs.

From the stereotype of the crazy cat lady to the joy of cat memes to the grief of pet loss, van Laer demonstrates that the cat-person relationship is free of the discipline and dependence required by parenting (and dog-parenting), creating a less hierarchical intimacy that offers a different model for love.

Author Bio

Rebecca van Laer is the author of How to Adjust to the Dark (2022). Her writing has appeared in Vol. 1 Brooklyn, BOMB, Electric Literature, The Iowa Review, and The Rumpus, among other places.