Reviews for Cat Wrangling Made Easy: Maintaining Peace and Sanity in Your Multicat Home

The average rating for Cat Wrangling Made Easy: Maintaining Peace and Sanity in Your Multicat Home based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-04-04 00:00:00 Ibrahim Karahan This was a decent book with a lot of really good information. The author gives a lot of good advice on how to deal with many of the issues faced by multi-cat owners. A huge portion of the book is dedicated to litter box issues and the section on cat hierarchy was truly fascinating. The chapter on disaster planning is particularly helpful. So why didn't I give it 5 stars? A few reasons. The author admits early on that she decided to go with a more lighthearted, conversational, slightly humorous approach. Overall it worked well but a few times it fell flat. The chapter titles in particular were so cutesy that I felt like if you wanted to just pick up the book and read the chapter related to your immediate issues that it wasn't necessarily easy to tell which chapter talked about what. Some of her information or statements just seemed a little questionable. For example: -In the chapter about litter boxes she recommends cleaning boxes daily and then scrubbing/disinfecting monthly. She mentions in an aside that a friend has decided litter boxes are so inexpensive that she just tosses old ones after a month and buys new. The "reduce/reuse/recycle" hippie in me cringed at the waste. -She mentions that cats should normally drink about two cups of water a day (including water that is in their food). That seems beyond excessive to me. I have 7 cats currently. They are most definitely not drinking 14 cups of water--even taking into account what's in their canned food. A new or inexperienced owner might be concerned. (I remember my first dog and trying to force her to eat the recommended amount on the bag. Very stressful.) -She suggests as a cost saving measure multi-cat owners could use large dog doses of flea treatment drops and split them among several cats. Then half a paragraph later mentions some dog treatments may be toxic to cats. I worked in a vet clinic at one point. I've seen cats die from inappropiately administered dog flea treatment. It's fast and ugly. And horrifying. I feel really strongly she should have emphasized the potential YOU COULD KILL YOUR CAT more. -I know she was trying to give useful information in her product recommendations, but some of them were so frequent I really had to wonder if she was getting a kickback. (Especially for ComfortZone, which she seems to think is a miracle worker--I've tried it multiple times and never noticed a difference.) But having said all that, I do think this is a worthwhile book. She makes helpful recommendations (tidbits like having electric ties available to put carriers together in an emergency) and covers a lot of ground. And she's realistic that sometimes you may need to rehome a kitty if things just don't work out--and she supplies a large number of resources for helping people in that situation. I definitely would recommend the book, just note it's not the definitive resource.

Review # 2 was written on 2008-08-24 00:00:00 Kenneth Hoffacker Not what I expected, and much more than how to keep peace with multiple cats. Addresses health issues, emergencies, end of life decisions, how to decide how many cats are too many, and the ever-popular litter box issues. Highly recommnded!