This book is not for anyone who loves cat and is looking for a collection of heartwarming cat stories. It is depressing and I found some of the stories to be outright cruel. If you are looking for a nice collection of cat stories by a veterinarian who writes fondly of cats, I suggest James Herriot's Cat Stories.

If you are a cat lover, do not be fooled by the title of this book. One would assume that this book would contain heartwarming stories of cats and their owners. That is not the case. Most of the owners in these stories don't even care about their cats. In one particular story, a man starves his cat to death. In another, a man poisons his cat with toxic paint. You are even led to believe that another man throws his cat into a bonfire. I was appalled by this book. This book should be thrown in the bonfire!

Some of the stories are fairly good. However, many are depressing, or worse. Do you really want to hear someone describe how his cat gets weaker and weaker and finally dies as he intentionally starves it to death? There are better collections of cat stories out there.

This book, by far, goes on my list of one of the worst books I have ever had the displeasure of reading. Pseudo-clever theoretical jumps about texts that oversimplify and completely decontextualize what the texts say. For example, "The Yellow Wallpaper," commonly thought to present a woman who is confined by her husband/doctor in the attic to lead to her eventual madness. According to Michaels, the short story is not about confinement and restriction, but about over-production of hysteria that the unnamed narrator is forced to engage in because of the ideology of her society. Interesting? maybe. Insightful about the Yellow Wallpaper? Not at all. If you are into post-structural theory masturbating over itself 244 pages, please buy this book.