"Dogs are not about something else. Dogs are about dogs," Malcolm Gladwell asserted indignantly in the introduction toThe Big New Yorker Book of Dogs. Though hailed as memetic rulers of the internet, cats have also enjoyed a long history asartistic and literary muses, but never have they been at once more about cats and more about something else than in Lost Cat: A True Story of Love, Desperation, and GPS Technology (public library) by firefighter-turned-writer Caroline Paul and illustrator extraordinaire Wendy MacNaughton, she of many wonderful collaborations – a tender, imaginative memoir infused with equal parts humor and humanity, also among thebest biographies, memoirs, and history books of the year. Though "about" a cat, this heartwarming and heartbreaking tale is really about what it means to be human – about the osmosis of hollowing loneliness and profound attachment, the oscillation between boundless affection and paralyzing fear of abandonment, the unfair promise of loss implicit to every possibility of love.
Lot's of sketches and cartoons follow at http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/04/09/lost-cat-wendy-macnaughton-caroline-paul/
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