Just Finished Reading: The Tribe of Tiger – Cats and their Culture by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas (FP: 1994) [234pp]

As my regular readers will know I have a love of all things Feline. OK, maybe not *all* things – litter trays, spraying & cat urine…. NOT nice!! But MOST things feline. Growing up we never had cats because my mother really doesn’t like them. We had just about everything else though, from snakes, fish, a whole host of birds and rabbits as well as various rodents. Just not cats. It was only in my late 20’s that a cat almost literally fell into my lap and I had her (or she had me – it’s hard to tell) for the next 16 years.

As I only ever had a single cat I could observe her behaviour as an individual but I never directly observed (at least not close up) how cats acted around each other – siblings or not – so I never experienced anything that could be called ‘culture’. The author recognised that her use of ‘culture’ in this regard was, at the very least, controversial but stuck to her rather unscientific guns throughout this chatty and often fascinating look at cats – both large and small. Hopping between her day to day experiences with several generations of house/farm cats, her stays in Africa with various local tribes and their contacts with lion populations and her encounters with large cats in North America this was much more than the standard ‘Why your cats does X’ book you often find in pet stores. With a family background in Anthropology, although not being a trained anthropologist herself, she has a number of interesting insights and ideas regarding both territoriality in cats and their social hierarchies – even in unrelated house/farm cat groupings. Using the more domesticated and more familiar house cat as reference the author shows how their behaviours are much more explicable when related to their much larger brethren on the African savanna or in the wild places of North America. Although I no longer have a cat I found this to be both an interesting and often heart-warming read from someone who really knows her subject and whose love of these creatures shines through on every page. Full of personal stories from both Africa and the States this was a delight from beginning to end and often felt like spending time with a favourite Aunt in a cosy room at the end of a long and productive day. Definitely a must read for all cat lovers out there. Recommended.