Tiger in the House Book

Cute concept: famed international correspondent Georgie Anne Geyer promises her pet cats that she will learn their sacred histories by jetsetting around the globe to places where cats were once revered. The journalism that takes her Egypt, Burma, Thailand, and Japan is incidental-- a cover, really-- for this study of the history and myth of sacred cats. Geyer's love for her cats and chatty, meandering tone were enjoyable, but the books got a bit too self-indulgent by the end. And the last section of the book is devoted to descriptions of modern cat breed, a concept that gives me willies. There was too much human racial essentialism, orientalism, built into her delight in attributing certain breed characteristics to the people who live in the region from whence each breed came.

My mom gave me this along with Geyer's Tunisia: A Story of a Country that Works, a much more interesting use of her happy, optimistic prose.