The cat family, especially the big cats, are an endless source of fascination. There is no more perfect predator on Earth than a cat. They were also never the target of unreasoning hatred the way wolves and wild dogs have been, so for a lot of people the wild cats have come to symbolize the entire natural world. My books about cats can be roughly divided into four groups:
| General books about cats | Individual species of cats | Domestic cats | Books by Joy and George Adamson |
These are books that survey the whole cat family, both living and extinct. For several million years Earth has hosted an impressive variety of wild cats, from the tiny desert cat to the mighty tiger. They live all over the world, in almost every climate. In most of the places where they live, they have no rivals for the role of top predator. For various reasons, they've also been the subject of more wildlife studies than any other group of predators. My books about wild cats include these:
AMERICA'S GREAT CATS*
Turbak, Gary
Photography by Alan Carey
c.1986, Northland Publishing
ISBN: 0-87358-409-0
Profiles of North America's major wild cats: the cougar, bobcat, and lynx. I recommend it more for the photography than the text. Alan Carey is a superb wildlife photographer, and this book contains some of his better work.
THE
BIG CATS AND THEIR FOSSIL RELATIVES
Turner, Alan
c.1997, Columbia Univ. Press
ISBN: 0-231-10228-3
A look at the paleontology of the cat family (Felidae), including a number of very good illustrations and a summary of all the fossil data known. The cat family has a long and rich fossil record, from the small and primitive Proailurus to the better-known Recent cats such as the sabertooths, and the modern big cats as well. This book also discusses more obscure cat-like fossil animals like the nimravids, which some palaeontologists believe are closely related to the true cats, while others place them in a separate family. The illustrations are by Mauricio Anton, a very fine artist with a special gift for taking fossil skulls and showing what they might have looked like when alive. It's striking how much less bizarre a sabertooth cat looks when most of the length of the long fangs is covered by flesh and skin.
GREAT CATS: MAJESTIC CREATURES OF THE WILD*
various
c.1991, Rodale Press
ISBN: 0-87857-965-6
Encyclopedic examination of the entire cat family, including modern cats and cat evolutionary history. Profiles all known wild cat species, focusing on the big cats but giving a lot of space to small cat species as well. I've found the "taxonomy" section, which gives a classification of all known cat species, invaluable on more than one occasion. Cat classification is in a state of flux right now; this book has a classification which is as good as any I've seen, and makes more sense than most.
KINGDOM OF MIGHT: THE WORLD'S BIG CATS*
Brakefield, Tom
c.1993, Voyageur Press
ISBN: 0-89658-210-8
Another coffee-table book that contains a general look at the big cats -- lion, leopard, tiger, cheetah, etc. Like many cat books, this one is better on photos than text.
WILD CATS OF THE WORLD*
Guggisberg, C. A. W.
c.1975, Taplinger
ISBN:
An overview of all well-known species of cat. Somewhat outdated now, because it was written in the early 1970s and based in large part on data that was a lot older. Still mildly interesting, though.
These are books that focus on one species of cat. Generally they're popular-science type books, with excellent photography. Hopwever, there have been a few formal studies of wild cats published in book form, and I have one or two of those as well. Most of these books focus on one of five species: cheetah, cougar, leopard, lion, or tiger.
Cheetah:
CHEETAHS OF THE SERENGETI PLAINS
Caro, T. M.
c.1994, University of Chicago
ISBN: 0-226-09434-0
Cheetahs are unusual cats in a lot of ways. Unlike all other cats, the cheetah is a chase hunter. It doesn't have retractable claws, and it isn't strong enough to defend itself against attackers. The cheetah also has an unusual social life. This book is a scientific study of several cheetahs from the famous Serengeti Plains of East Africa: their lifestyle, prey, social lives, and so on. I don't recommend this for a casual reader, because it's a formal study with all the jargon you might expect in a formal study.
Cougar:
COUGAR!
Danz, Harold P.
c.1999, Swallow Press
ISBN: 0-8040-1015-3
A lengthy and detailed look at the cougar: natural history, population, habits, ecology, and its interactions with humans. Danz set out to answer a relatively simple question: how dangerous are cougars to humans? But his book metamorphoses into a more extensive study of the animal at all levels, an attempt to do for cougars what Barry Lopez did for wolves in Of Wolves and Men. For the most part, he succeeds at that goal. He never adequately answers the original question, but he provides most of the information necessary for readers to reach their own conclusions.
COUGAR: THE AMERICAN LION
Hansen, Kevin
c.1992, Northland Publishing
ISBN: 0-87358-544-5
A profile of the cougar in the wild: habits, physiology, prey, range, etc.
COUGAR: GHOST OF THE ROCKIES
McCall and Dutcher
c.1992, South Sea Int'l
ISBN: 0-87156-564-1
A profile of the cougar, focusing mainly on a raised-in-captivity female cougar named Catrina and her kittens. This isn't intended to be any kind of formal study of cougars, though it does give basic statistics on the species. Mainly it's an attempt to give an impression of how a cougar lives and what it's like to interact with one. The text is a bit thin, but the photographs are superb.
THE PUMA: MYSTERIOUS AMERICAN CAT*
Young, Stanley & Goldman, Edward
c.1946, Dover Books
ISBN:
Stanley Young and Ed Goldman's detailed look at the state of knowledge about the puma or cougar. Of course, it reflects the 1940s view of predators and doesn't contain anything that was learned after that. Still, it is interesting.
Leopard:
AFRICAN LEOPARD, THE: Ecology and Behavior of a Solitary Felid
Bailey, Theodore N.
c.1993, Columbia Univ. Press
ISBN: 0-231-07872-2
From 1973 to 1975, Theodore Bailey conducted a study of leopards in the wild environment of Kruger National Park, South Africa. This book is a lengthy and detailed report on what he found, mixed with plenty of other data on leopards from both before and after his own study.
LEOPARD*
Hinde, Gerald
c.1992, HarperCollins
ISBN: 0-00-219936-X
A profile of leopards in the wild, focusing on five individual South African leopards.
THE LEOPARD'S TALE*
Scott, Jonathan
c.1985, Elm Tree
ISBN: 0-241-11444-6
Jonathan Scott is a wildlife photographer with many years' experience photographing African wildlife. His favorite place to work is the Masai Mara Game Preserve in southern Kenya, which is the northern half of the great wildebeest migration that begins on the Serengeti Plains in northern Tanzania. In this book he and his camera follow a specific leopard of the Masai Mara, named Chui, for an in-depth study of her two cubs which he named Light and Dark.
Lion:
KINGDOM OF LIONS*
Scott, Jonathan
c.1992, Rodale
ISBN: 0-87596-550-4
Jonathan Scott's back with his camera. Scott calls the Masai Mara "the Kingdom of Lions," after the half-dozen lion prides that dominate the preserve. This book is a collection of photo-essays with accompanying text. Some are about the lions of the Masai Mara. Others are about the other predators in the area: leopards, cheetahs, hyenas, and African wild dogs. Scott is a very good photographer, and many of these photos are just awesome.
THE MAN-EATERS OF TSAVO
Patterson, J. H., Lt. Col.
c.1996, Pocket Books
ISBN: 0-671-00306-2
The real story behind the movie "The Ghost and the Darkness." In 1898, two lions (actually lionesses) terrorized a British rail project in Africa by making the rail workers their regular prey. Lt. Col. Patterson was the leader of the railway contruction unit, and eventually had to hunt down and kill the marauding lions.
Tigers:
HOW THE TIGER LOST ITS STRIPES
Meacham, Cory
c.1997, Harcourt Brace
ISBN: 0-15-100279-7
A look at the Indian tiger: its history, its interaction with humans, and its current plight. This book does for tigers what Barry Lopez's OF WOLVES AND MEN did for wolves.
MAN-EATERS OF KUMAON
Corbett, Jim
c.1946, Oxford Univ.
ISBN:
The Indian tiger is notorious for its tendency to turn man-eater. Jim Corbett was a white hunter in India in the middle of the 20th century. This book includes Corbett's memoirs of several man-eater tigers which he had to track and kill in the Kumaon province of India.
SOUL OF THE TIGER: Searching for Nature's Answers in Southeast Asia
McNeely & Wachtel
c.1988, Athena Books
ISBN: 1-55778-280-6
SPELL OF THE TIGER: The Man-eaters of Sundarbans*
Montgomery, Sy
c.1995, Houghton Mifflin
ISBN: 0-395-64169-1
The vast mangrove swamp called Sundarbans, east of the mouth of the River Hooghly, is home to several thousand humans. It's also home to the only population of predators anywhere in the world who make humans a regular part of their diet. Sundarbans tigers are very creative in their methods of hunting humans, going as far as to use water for concealment. This book studies the tigers of Sundarbans, the people who share the tigers' world, and the relationship between them.
TIGER: PORTRAIT OF A PREDATOR
Ziesler and Rathore
c.1986, Facts On File
ISBN: 0-8160-1238-5
A close-up look at the tiger: biology, habitat, habits, prey, etc.
Cats make good pets for people who can't have a dog, for whatever reason. These are books that focus on domestic cats: breeds, care and feeding, that sort of thing.
ALL MY PATIENTS ARE UNDER THE BED: Memoirs of a Cat Doctor
Camuti, Louis J.
c.1985, Fireside Books
ISBN: 0-671-55450-6
Louis Camuti spent sixty years as a cats-only veterinarian in a very cat-unfriendly place: Manhattan. Toward the end of his life, he wrote this book of reminiscences about his experiences as a cat doctor.
A CAT IS WATCHING: A LOOK AT THE WAY CATS SEE US
Caras, Roger
c.1989, Simon & Schuster
ISBN:
Roger Caras kept cats for most of his life. This book represents his observations and thoughts about domestic cats and the way they live, and how they see us and each other. Caras's view of animals was heavily anthropomorphic, so a lot of what's in here should be taken with several grains of salt. But there are a few bits of useful information nevertheless.
THE BOOK OF THE CAT
various authors
c.1980, New Leaf Books
ISBN: 0-671-41624-3
A detailed examination of the domestic cat: physiology, psychology, ancestry, cat breeds, disease, caring for a cat, etc. An invaluable resource for anyone who has a cat.
THE CATS OF THISTLE HILL
Caras, Roger A.
c.1994, Simon & Schuster
ISBN: 0-671-75462-9
When Roger Caras and his wife bought a farm in the Maryland countryside, they brought their cats with them and found several more cats already in residence. Over the first few years they lived at Thistle Hill Farm, Caras watched his cats' behavior. In this book, he tells the stories of some of the Thistle Hill cats. As with his other books, Caras's perceptions of his pets are heavily and sometimes painfully anthropomorphic, but the book is an interesting read anyway.
CATS, SIMON & SCHUSTER'S GUIDE TO
Pugnetti, Gino
c.1983, Simon & Schuster
ISBN: 0-671-49170-9
THE CHARACTER OF CATS
Budiansky, Stephen
c.2002, Viking Press
ISBN: 0-670-03093-7
THE COMPLETE CAT BOOK
Gebhardt, Richard H.
c.1991, Mirabel Books
ISBN: 0-87605-919-1
Another general guide to domestic cats and how to share your home with one or more of them.
THIS IS THE MAINE COON CAT
Bass, Sharyn P.
c.1983, T.F.H. Publications
ISBN: 0-86622-096-8
A guide to the breed of cat called the Maine Coon Cat.
Joy and George Adamson and their big cats
Finally, a special place is set aside on my cat-books shelf for a cluster of books by Joy and George Adamson. Joy Adamson was made famous by her work with Elsa the lioness, but Elsa was not the only big cat she raised and returned to the wild. She also worked with a cheetah and a leopard, while George kept working with lions. Between them they wrote seven books about their work with African big cats:
The Story of Elsa the Lioness:
BORN FREE: A LIONESS OF TWO WORLDS
Adamson, Joy
c.1960, Pantheon Books
ISBN:
Joy Adamson's first book, the story of how she and her husband raised, retrained, and eventually released into the wild a female lion cub. Adamson indulges in some pretty obvious anthropomorphism, but at the same time she manages not to lose sight of what Elsa was: a lioness, a wild animal, not a pet and not a human. I don't know how big a role this book played in sparking the environmental movement, but it had to be significant. BORN FREE has been printed many times in many formats: hardcover, trade-paperback, mass-market paperback. The link takes you to a new 40th-anniversary reprinting of this milestone book.
LIVING FREE: THE STORY OF ELSA AND HER CUBS*
Adamson, Joy
c.1961, Harcourt, Brace, & World
ISBN:
Adamson's story of Elsa and her cubs, from the end of BORN FREE to the point in time when they were ordered to move Elsa and her cubs to a new location. Elsa's ability to fend for herself in the wild, to mate with a wild lion, and successfully birth and raise a litter of cubs, marked the complete success of Adamson's experiment with "rehabilitating" Elsa.
FOREVER FREE
Adamson, Joy
c. 1962, Harcourt, Brace & World
ISBN:
The third and last book in the story of Elsa and her cubs. This one tells of how Elsa died of an infection, and the cubs were eventually moved and released in the Serengeti National Park, Tanzania.
After her experiences with Elsa, Joy Adamson continued working to rescue, retrain, and release African cats. She wrote three more books about these experiences:
THE SPOTTED SPHINX*
Adamson, Joy
c.1969, Harcourt, Brace, & World
ISBN:
Adamson's account of how she raised Pippa, a female cheetah cub.
PIPPA'S CHALLENGE*
Adamson, Joy
c.1972, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
ISBN: 0-15-171980-2
Sequel to The Spotted Sphinx, about Pippa's later life.
QUEEN OF SHABA: THE STORY OF AN AFRICAN LEOPARD
Adamson, Joy
c.1980, Elsa Limited
ISBN: 0-15-175651-1
Joy Adamson's last book, an account of raising and releasing a female leopard.
George Adamson only wrote one book:
MY PRIDE AND JOY: An Autobiography*
Adamson, George
c.1987, Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0-671-62497-0
George Adamson's autobiography, about his life as a game warden, his relationship with Joy Adamson, and his work after retiring, raising and rehabilitating lions for release into the wild.
