The Nine Emotional Lives of Cats
A Journey into the Feline Heart
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
In the hugely popular New York Times bestseller, Dogs Never Lie About Love, provocative psychoanalyst Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson brilliantly navigated the inner landscape of “man’s best friend.” Now he delves deep into the secretive, playful world of cats, revealing emotions, debunking myths, and honoring the feline’s evolution from solitary jungle creature to human companion.
Drawing from literature, history, animal behavioral research, and the wonderful true stories of cat experts and cat lovers around the world, Jeffrey Masson vividly explores the delights and mysteries of the feline heart. But at the core of this remarkable book are Masson’s candid, often amusing observations of his own five cats. Their mischievousness, aloofness, and affection provide a way to examine emotions from contentment to jealousy, from anger to love.
Consider the question: Are cats selfish? While human egocentricity is defined by how little a person cares about others, the cat’s narcissism is not like that at all. Cats may appear self-centered, but they watch us all the time, taking us in. They see us; they notice us–a far cry from vanity.
Cats are curious, a trait that rarely kills them. On the contrary, it gives them the chance to assess, in their own idiosyncratic way, whether we are worthy of their attention. Cats are happy to be themselves. What they think of us is a different question entirely. “We need cats to need us,” notes Masson, “It unnerves us that they do not. However, if they do not need us, they nonetheless seem to love us.”
The Nine Emotional Lives of Cats will captivate readers with its surprises and insights, offering a new perspective on the deep connection shared by humans and their feline friends. This is the book that Masson’s many fans and cat lovers everywhere have been waiting for.
From the Hardcover edition.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Prevailing wisdom holds that cats are aloof, smug, quintessentially distant especially when compared to dogs but Masson, in his latest exploration of feelings in the animal world, argues otherwise: "cats," he says, "are almost pure emotion." He establishes nine basics (narcissism, love, contentment, attachment, jealousy, fear, anger, curiosity and playfulness) and, in nine casual and sometimes digressive chapters, suggests when and why cats feel each of them and how we humans might better understand our pets as a result. In the tradition of his bestselling Dogs Never Lie About Love, Masson's exploration is a warm fuzzy to the feline world: in observing the antics of his five cats (Miki, Moko, Yossie, Megalamandira and Minnalouche), Masson's tone never fails to convey his wonder for "these perfect beings who briefly and softly grace my life." He draws desultorily on history, scientific research and correspondence with cat experts and owners, but most of his book is dedicated to a highly subjective study of his beloved five, who live with him in a New Zealand paradise. Though Masson strains to establish evidence for cats' sophisticated emotional landscape (and in doing so exposes himself to accusations of anthropomorphism), cats are still mysterious creatures, and even a former psychoanalyst such as he must occasionally admit (though with a certain kind of glee) that he cannot entirely figure them out. One thing Masson is sure of: because cats, unlike humans and dogs, have never been pack animals, much of what comes naturally to us guilt, apology, even rage is absent in cats. In the end, this appealing book is as much a portrait of Masson as it is of his enchanting cats.