I've been an animal lover most of my life and have a fondness for cats. When I read "The Tribe of Tiger", this intellectual treatise and scholarly research on an animal we take for granted, it opened my eyes and mind to the possibilities of what I wanted to be able to write. I am a huge fan of Dr. Elizabeth Marshall Thomas' body of work and admire her many years of anthropological study often involving indigenous people in the African countries. I have a particular fondness for her books and her scholarly respect towards the animal world and am happy that she continues this.

My roommate suggested I read this book after I got my cat Caspian. Although it was a facinating read it didn't quite go into a lot of depth concerning urban housecats. Still, a good overview of the nature of the species as a whole, not to mention some really beautiful descriptions of African lions.

Interesting enough, but it was framed as much more scientific that I found it to actually be.

This book is about the culture of cats--big cats as well as house cats, wild cats as well as domesticated cats. The author, who is an anthropologist and has also written books about dog and deer behavior, has many fascinating stories to tell about the behavior of house cats, lions and tigers in the wild and captivity, and American pumas. The book meanders a bit--it doesn't progress toward a central argument so much as give many examples of cats teaching/learning culture from different types of cat life.

This is NOT a cute book of cat stories, though. I had to take a break from it for a few weeks because I found it too hard to read about dwindling wild cat populations, unwanted tigers being sold to people who provide "game" for hunters to shoot, zoos euthanizing tigers after they've passed their breeding age, and so forth. These depressing topics were discussed in a matter of fact way, but I was not in a frame of mind to be able to deal with them one after the other, page after page.

I was surprised by Thomas's argument for why the life of a circus tiger was better than that of a zoo tiger--especially since I have recently received a rash of emails from an animal rights group which wants me to oppose animal circuses in my city. Also, her description of the time she spent in the Kalahari with a community of bushmen, observing, among other things, their relationship with the lion population there, was very beautiful. I recommend this book, but approach with care if you are sensitive.

Relying mostly on field studies and some anecdotal evidence, Thomas uses her insights as an anthropologist to posit the existence of cat culture. She does a pretty convincing job, explaining transmitted knowledge among cat families which affects their predation strategies, interactions with humans, and social hierarchies. She also explores instinctual cat behaviour (such as territorial aquisition and sexual selection) and how instincts work in tandem with cross- generational knowledge transimission. In particular, culture is useful to help cats adapt to a changing environment. However, outdated knowledge/cultural behaviour can also back-fire, to a cat society's detriment. She observes cats from a variety of species (house cats, lynxes, pumas, lions, tigers) and settings (wild, domestic, zoo-kept, circus animals) to make her claims.

As a bit of a felinophile I found most chapters to be interesting, but this is by no means a fully fleshed out scientific treatise. Rather, it raises more questions than it answers about the inner working of cat psychology and culture, but certainly suggests that there are mechanisms at play that we are only beginning to understand. Entertaining, packed with accessible information for the layperson, and sweet.

The begining section was very interesting and filled with awesome facts about cats, housecats, or wild cats. The middle section however, was very, very boring. I could care less about that tribe of people and most of it was about lions, and did not relate anything to housecats, which I was most interested in. The ending section slightly made up for it, but it was nothing compared to the first section.

I loved this book. The author is incredibly informative and explains cat behavior along with history of cats in an easy to understand way. She includes small stories on the side of her personal interactions with cats large and small.

Fellow crazy cat ladies of the world, I implore you to read this lovely book.