Book Review: The Ninth Life, by Clea Simon

For years, we’ve been reading and loving cat cozies—those fun, light books featuring one or more cats, a quirky amateur sleuth, and a rather delightful murder—and yet somehow, Clea Simon’s The Ninth Life is exactly the book we’ve been waiting for. Compelling is not a word that comes to mind to describe most mysteries we review here, but it is the first word that came to mind as we read the first book in Simon’s new series.

The Ninth Life is not a cozy mystery. It is instead the kind of darker story that grips you by the throat on page one and does not release you until you’ve turned the final page. I say it’s the book we’ve been waiting for partly because it is told entirely from the cat’s point of view, and I can tell you, Clea Simon is a writer who has spent some time thinking about what it’s like to be a cat. The story starts in a most disturbing way, with the cat’s near-drowning. Fortunately, the cat is rescued by a pink-haired girl of perhaps fourteen, but if you think the story is going to get all warm and cuddly from that point on, think again.

Because this girl—Care, her name is—lives the uncertain existence of a child of the streets. It’s not unlike the life of a stray cat, only with the added pressures exerted by those humans who are older, or just bigger and stronger, and are eager to use the younger and weaker for their own ends.

Care names her new feline companion Blackie, and he begins to follow her—and not just for the meager amount of subpar food she’s able to share with him. Blackie sees himself as Care’s protector as the girl tries to solve the mystery of who killed the unnamed “old man” who, until his death, had been her mentor in the field of private investigation. But for this cat, Care’s on her own as she works on the old man’s last case, with precious few clues and surrounded by a bunch of sleazy types with names like Fat Peter (only he’s dead too) and Diamond Jim. And then there’s the younger boy named Tick, whom Care is looking after, or trying to, though we’re not sure what Tick is trying to do to her.

Good thing Blackie is along for the ride. He knows to be wary of everything, for this is not his first rodeo, as they say in some places. Curiously, though he’s older, he also seems brand new in some ways. Blackie seems to be remembering—or perhaps discovering?—who he is as he goes along. “I am a cat…I am older.” He makes this statement as much to himself as to the reader. Blackie also seems to suffer from PTSD after that near-drowning, sometimes waking from nightmares that cause him to lash out at Care, drawing her blood. At first he struggles whenever she picks him up, not understanding her intentions, not really trusting her, fearing she will betray him after the little bit of trust he’s granted her. But Care never turns on him, and so they stick together, surviving in the shadows as the pink-haired girl moves ever closer to a dangerous truth.

The mystery part of this story may or may not involve a stolen emerald necklace—or something much, much bigger. The reader receives bits of the story as Blackie receives them, through others’ conversations and the cat’s keen sense of smell. Those intricate criminal intentions are not always easy to follow, and we still wouldn’t swear we understand them, but when it comes down to it, we don’t really care: The magic in this story is all between Care and Blackie, and there’s plenty of it.

As I said earlier, Clea Simon has clearly spent some time considering what it’s like to be a cat. Blackie (and Care, ultimately) moves through the city as both hunter and prey, vulnerable and dangerous at the same time, depending on who the foe is. He understands both less and more than Care does, and he longs to communicate with her as easily as she talks to him. We especially like the way Blackie grooms when he is upset: “One asserts order however one can.” So true.

We found The Ninth Life to be true edge-of-your-seat reading. The story is stark, as is the setting, yet Simon dots it all with moments of insight and small beauties that offer hope. We’re left feeling that as long as Care and Blackie have each other, they’ll somehow be okay. This story isn’t cute and cuddly, but oh, is it good!

Highly recommended!

A note on the "Paws Up" system: Miss C gives either one or two paws up. One paw is for a good read; two paws is for a great read. She never gives three or four paws because that would require her to lie on her back...and Miss C does not do that!

We received a free copy of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review. We wouldn’t tell you it was good unless we really liked it!

The link below is an Amazon Associates link. If you purchase the book through this link, old SoLT and I could get some coin for our kibble account. Thank you!

The Bengal Cat: A Little Wildcat in the Living Room

Bengal cat. Photo by Svetlana Valiskaya.

In our continuing exploration into the leopard cat and its possible domestication in ancient China, today we consider the Bengal cat, a domestic breed that is a cross between the wild leopard cat and a domestic cat. These crosses were being made by the late 19th century, if not earlier, though the breed didn’t become “official” until a century later.

The modern Bengals offered by reputable breeders are at least four generations removed from their wild ancestors but still have that wildcat look, with handsome and vividly colored spotted or marbled coats. Bengals are in the medium to large size range for domestic cats and are known for their active, inquisitive nature. Just like their leopard cat relatives, these cats enjoy water and sometimes jump into the bath or shower. They also enjoy high places.

While, yes, they are domesticated, a Bengal will always be its own cat. They’ve been described as “rambunctious, funny, beautiful and dynamic” (TICA) and “happiest when [they are] the center of attention (Pickeral, 212).

Our favorite thing about Bengals, though, is that they have a rich and interesting history.

Early history

We can’t say for sure when the first cross between a leopard cat and a domestic cat happened. The first record of such a hybrid (at least that we could find) appeared in 1889, when the noted British cat fancier Harrison Weir wrote of a cat he’d seen at the Zoological Society Gardens in Regent’s Park. It was said to be the offspring of a male “wild cat of Bengal and a tabby she-cat.” The cat, Weir said, was “handsome, but very wild.”

The next known record is from 1934, when a leopard cat–domestic hybrid was mentioned in a Belgian scientific journal. Unfortunately, although lots of people know (or have repeated) that this unnamed Belgian scientific journal mentioned this hybrid cat, no one seems to know what said journal actually had to report about said cat.

Breeding begins

We next pick up the Bengal’s story in 1961, when Jean Sugden Mill, an American interested in cat breeding, obtained a wild leopard cat. This cat “got involved” with Mill’s black domestic cat, and the result was one kitten. Some sources give the date of this breeding as 1963 (TICA). This nascent breeding project petered out, but Mill would reappear a little later in the breed’s history.

The leukemia connection

Leopard cat-domestic cat hybrids intrigued cancer
researchers in the 1970s. Domestic cats carry the
genome for a feline leukemia virus in their DNA,
but leopard cats do not. What would happen to
the virus genome in the hybrid cats?
Illustration © Saporob | Dreamstime.com Dna

Leopard cat–domestic hybrids also played a role in leukemia research. Domestic cats carry the genome for the Type C feline leukemia virus in their DNA and pass it on to their offspring; wild leopard cats do not. In the 1970s, a Loma Linda University geneticist named Willard R. Centerwall wondered what would happen to the leukemia genome in hybrids of the two species. He hoped that investigations into that question would help scientists better understand leukemia in humans.

In conjunction with Dr. Raoul Benveniste of the National Cancer Institute in Maryland, Centerwall began a breeding program to produce leopard cat–domestic hybrids and then “backcross” the female hybrids with male leopard cats and domestic cats. (Males in the first generation of hybrids were all sterile, so the hybrids could not be bred to one another.)

There was a problem, though: The half-wild mothers tended to kill their kittens. The solution? Adopt the kittens out to Loma Linda students and employees to be placed with domestic mother cats and their litters. After they were weaned, the hybrids would then be returned to Dr. Centerwall.

Most of these cats were housed at Loma Linda University Medical Center, though some were kept at private homes. Dr. Centerwall described the hybrid offspring as “edgy.” Some could become tame with frequent handling after weaning, but they were “almost impossible to housebreak” (Gleaner). In other words, not great pets.

The breed gets a name

Bengals are known for
being active and playful.
Photo by Eric Isselée.

So far in this history, we haven’t referred to the hybrid cats as “Bengals.” That’s because they didn’t get that name until 1970, when another American, Bill Engler, bred a male leopard cat to two domestic females and called the kittens Bengals. Five years later, Engler had more than 60 Bengals, and the cats were into the third generation.

This is the point where Jean Sugden Mill comes back into the picture. In 1980 she was given some first-generation kittens from Dr. Centerwall, then she received some more hybrids from another cat person (these had also originated from Centerwall) and she started breeding again. In efforts to increase the gene pool, Mill added other cats to her breeding program, including an Indian street cat credited with giving some Bengals a glittery coat. Mill’s efforts resulted in the “ideal” Bengal, a cat named Millwood Penny Ante who became well known on the cat show circuit.

Today the breed is accepted by many (though not all) cat fancy associations, including the American Cat Fanciers Association and The International Cat Association.

Most importantly, Bengals continue to be fascinating.

Sources

Gleaner. (1977, October 3). “Leukemia’s Hereditary Factors Are Studied,” p. 17.

The International Cat Association (TICA). http://tica.org/cat-breeds/item/184

Pickeral, Tamsin. (2013). “Bengal,” in The Elegance of the Cat: An Illustrated History, pp. 212–219. Hauppage, NY: Barron’s.

Vet Street. http://www.vetstreet.com/cats/bengal#grooming

Weir, Harrison. (1892). Our Cats and All About Them. Kindle edition created from the new edition of 1892.

App Review: Weather Cats

Humans are obsessed with the weather. If you want to know exactly how obsessed, just search for “weather apps” on your phone, and prepare to be overwhelmed. Certain humans (possibly you, if you’re reading this blog) are also obsessed with cats, so it’s really no surprise that there are several apps combining cats and weather. Today we are considering one called Weather Cats.

A screenshot from Weather
Cats. Cute cats.

This app, created by Hamster Factory, is free and has no ads. It is available for iPhone and iPad and requires iOS 8 or later.

We used Weather Cats on She of Little Talent’s iPhone for a couple of weeks. It gives the current day’s weather forecast and a three-day forecast for one location—sometimes. Mostly it only provides a three-day forecast that is, um, unreliable. The day before the Blizzard of 2016 arrived here, Weather Cats claimed the next day would bring “light snow.” We got two feet of snow, which I guess might be considered light…on a snow planet.

But the app does have some cute cat pictures, and you can choose from among six different cat patterns for the background. We like the snow leopard, though the tiger is easier for reading.

The bottom line is this: Weather Cats is not a reliable weather app. It is, however, a reliable cat picture app, though it has only a few pictures. We check Weather Cats once in a while because we like some of the pictures and, hey, it's free, but when it’s time to check the weather, we look out the window.

What Is a Leopard Cat?

Leopard Cat in Bronx Zoo.
By Stavenn (Own work)
[GFDL, CC-BY-SA-3.0, or CC BY 2.5],
via Wikimedia Commons; 

If you have been paying attention to this blog, you’ll remember that last week we wrote of new evidence that leopard cats may have been domesticated or almost domesticated 5,000 years ago in parts of China. We thought you might perhaps be curious about these leopard cats, and so this week we report on the species otherwise known as Prionailurus bengalensis.

Leopard cats are found across a
large area of Asia, and populations
show wide variation in size
and color from north to south.
Map from IUCN Red List of  Threatened Species,
species assessors and the authors of the
spatial data. [CC BY-SA 3.0 ],
via Wikimedia Commons.

First off, the leopard cat is the most common small cat in Asia. They have a large range: from Java up through Malaysia, China, and into parts of Russia. They’re found in parts of India, too. Leopard cats are roughly the size of domestic cats, only with longer legs. Their size varies a lot across their range, though, from just 1.2 pounds in Malaysia to 15 pounds in Russia (Sunquist & Sunquist, p. 193). As their name implies, their coats are spotted, giving them the appearance of small leopards. Coloring varies, from yellowish-brown in the south to grayish-brown in the north (“Leopard Cat Facts”).

One really interesting thing about leopard cats is that they like to swim. Let me say that again: They like to swim. Go figure. They’ve even been known to swim to and colonize islands, and one leopard cat that swam to a ship in the Bay of Bengal became the first of its species to be described by scientists (Sunquist & Sunquist, p. 193). We wonder if the cat regretted taking that swim.

Leopard cats eat mostly rats and mice, but they’ll eat other things too, like birds and fish. They hunt mostly at night, whether in trees or on the ground—and, since they sometimes eat fish, they can also hunt either in water or from the shore.

Because of their beautiful coat pattern, leopard cats have been hunted for their pelts. They’re not considered threatened or endangered, but habitat loss is a problem in some areas, and then there’s that killing-for-coats thing. In China in the 1980s, “hundreds of thousands of Leopard Cat skins were exported per year” (IUCN). This trade isn’t as common as it once was, but leopard cats are still hunted for their fur or as food. Sometimes they’re killed for being pests to poultry.

And, in an example of history repeating itself, people are still working on domesticating leopard cats. The cats are sometimes taken from the wild to be made into pets or to be bred with domestic cats. That domestic breeding has produced the popular Bengal cat breed, which we will learn about next week.

Sources

IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. “Prionailurus bengalensis.” http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/18146/0

“Leopard cat.” Arkive. http://www.arkive.org/leopard-cat/prionailurus-bengalensis/image-G74417.html

“Leopard Cat Facts.” (March 15, 2015). Big Cat Rescue. https://bigcatrescue.org/leopard-cat-facts/

Sunquist, F., & Sunquist, M. (2014). The Wild Cat Book. University of Chicago Press.

Jaguar Spotted in Arizona

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, there were jaguars in North America. The stocky, spotted cats "roamed from Oregon to Pennsylvania" but disappeared from those northern reaches before Europeans colonized the continent (Sunquist & Sunquist, p. 19). For years now, jaguars in North America have been more a rumor than an actual presence, though the cats have been seen sporadically in southern Arizona.

Now, there is video evidence of a male jaguar in the Santa Rita Mountains near Tucson. The video, released yesterday by Conservation CATalyst, was taken via remote sensor camera. It shows the jaguar, known as El Jefe ("the boss"), padding through the forest and picking his way along a rocky streambed. Here, have a look:

Wasn't that thrilling? Just imagine coming upon that cat while you're out for a walk in the woods!

Sources

CNN. (Feb. 3, 2016). A Wild Jaguar in the United States? There's Video of One in Arizona. http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/03/us/wild-jaguar-video-arizona-feat/index.html

Sunquist, F., & Sunquist M. (2014). The Wild Cat Book. University of Chicago Press.

Adoptable Cat: Max, Looking for a Little Human Companionship

Cats with a Past

Cats and humans need each other. (Really, how any of you humans can survive without the help of at least one of us cats is beyond me.) Max the cat is currently in need of a human to love him, and we just know there’s a human out there somewhere who is waiting to welcome him into their home.

Max is a handsome orange tabby who is 12–14 years old. He is currently in foster care through the Cats R Us organization in the Annapolis, MD, area. His foster caregiver reports that Max is a lovable fellow who gets along with just about anyone. He likes other cats, and even dogs. (Is there anyone Max doesn’t like?)

What Max really needs is a home of his own and someone to spend time with. Perhaps you work from home and need a companion to fill in that empty space in your office (and living room, bedroom, kitchen, and however many other rooms you have)? Max could be your guy! He would also make a nice kitty companion for a retired person. And if you’re away from home during the day, Max will be fine; he’ll just take a good nap.

Update: Max has been adopted! But Cats R Us has lots of other great cats in the Annapolis area. To learn more and to see  the cats, visit http://catsrusrescue.org/adopt/.

Book Review: Murder Most Finicky

Murder Most Finicky, by Liz Mugavero, combines three of our favorite things: cats, food, and of course, murder.

Well, I say “cats,” but what I really mean is “cat,” singular. His name is Nutty, and he’s a Maine coon who has the great good fortune to live with one Kristan “Stan” Connor, a former public relations guru who now creates delicious goodies for pets. Every cat should have a person who spends their days thinking up recipes for delectable feline foods—am I right?

Anyway, Stan is looking to partner with one Sheldon Allyn (that’s “Mr. Pastry” to foodies in the know) to open a pet patisserie in Frog Ledge, Connecticut, her hometown. There’s just one little catch, though, and the book opens with Stan being blindfolded and put into the back of a pastry truck by one of Sheldon’s goons…I mean “helpers.” Nutty is also placed into the truck, which is then driven to an undisclosed location for what is supposed to be a weekend retreat for a bunch of “star chefs.”

Turns out the real purpose of this gathering (and “retreat” is hardly the word I would use to describe it) is to prepare a very special meal for a bunch of investors. The event will be featured in a magazine, and there’s the possibility of a television series on a food channel. Stan’s role is to prepare food for one investor’s Siamese cat: a pampered, prize-winning Siamese cat who will undoubtedly be finicky. Nutty is to be the taste-tester. No pressure though, right?

Naturally, things soon take a bad turn. Before the group members have even toured their fancy digs for the weekend, Stan wanders off and finds a dead body. (These things just happen to some people; we don’t know why.) The body is that of Pierre LaPorte, a pastry chef who was supposed to be part of the event. Questions among the group quickly go from “Where’s Pierre?” to “Who slit Pierre's throat?”

What follows is a crazy but surprisingly plausible weekend of suspicion, amateur sleuthing, innuendo, and a little cooking. Everyone is a suspect, and everyone (except Stan) seems to know some secrets about their fellow chefs. After one chef disappears and a replacement fails to show up, it’s starting to look like this event is not a safe place to be, but Sheldon is not about to cancel—not when so much money is at stake. And so the show goes on, all the way to its unexpected conclusion.

Mugavero has given us an intriguingly yummy read. We came to like Stan right away. She is a refreshing bit of normal in a big bunch of crazy. The other chef and baker types are… Well, let’s call them eccentric. Stan, though, is just the kind of person you would trust to cook for your pet; she loves animals and she’s not a wacko. Yes, she seems to have a knack for stumbling across dead bodies, but you can't really blame a person for that.

Mugavero’s writing is lovely, clear, and effortless to read, even when the plot gets complicated (there are several past and present relationships to keep track of). We especially enjoyed the kitchen scene in which cooking for the grand event finally begins. Pots are boiling, vegetables are sautéing, oil is spattering. It sounds like a delightful kitchen to be in, except for that sense of doom hanging over everything (doom is generally a bad thing in a kitchen).

Our one beef with this book is that Nutty the Maine coon is not as much in the center of things as we’d hoped. We like to see the cat as the star of the show, doing lots of catlike things, but here he’s more of a well-fed supporting character. That, though, is a minor point in a book that is 100 percent enjoyable otherwise.

Highly recommended!

A note on the "Paws Up" system: Miss C gives either one or two paws up. One paw is for a good read; two paws is for a great read. She never gives three or four paws because that would require her to lie on her back...and Miss C does not do that!