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Member: StrayCat

CollectionsYour library (174)

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Tagsanimal welfare (17), wildlife (16), animal rights (16), human behavior (14), cat fiction (12), cat health (12), birding (12), environment (11), animal behavior (7), feral cats (7) — see all tags

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Favorite authorsSheila Burnford, Juliet Clutton-Brock, Margaret Craven, Paul Gallico, Jim Kjelgaard, May Sarton, Henry Williamson (Shared favorites)

About meFor over 30 years, my husband and I rescued stray cats (as well as injured birds, lost dogs and a couple of disoriented bats). We did it on a modest scale - perhaps 30 cats in that time. The latest, who joined our household November 2007 after several months of coaxing, is named Churchill, aka Squirt, aka Champ, aka Squirtchill, aka Please-Get-Off-My-Desk-I-Don't-Have Room-to-Work -17 pounds. (We suspect he has mooched over multiple families the last year.) [Update:Churchill disappeared April 1, 2009 from our yard in central Denver. Found him in neighbor's garage on April 18. He is fine. We are still scratching our heads.]

Several years ago, I was contracted to write a book about stray cats. The book investigated several issues:

The natural history of the domesticated cat;
The history of the treatment of domesticated cats, particularly in the West;
The history of the animal welfare and animal rights movements and the ensuing wars between the different philosophical views;
The current feral cat controversies and the related topics of wildlife management and disease control;
And, what the average person can do to help stray cats, given the different choices.

I interviewed experts and activists, visited libraries and animal shelters, read magazines, attended conferences, inspected facilities, and talked to cat lovers from Anchorage to Miami, as well as corresponding with cat rescuers in other countries. I scanned hundreds of journal and newspaper articles and spent a day reading 19th century articles in the Library of Congress. The manuscript was rejected, but I was left with an interesting collection of material. So, I sifted through the books and chose the ones that made a significant contribution to my research and which are accessible to the average person. I don't necessarily agree with everything on this list; in fact, one of the more interesting results of my research was discovering the strong disagreements among degreed professionals about simple facts regarding cats, such as nutrition and the best ways to socialize strays.

Someday, I will edit the manuscript and, if I can not find a new publisher, will post it online.

About my libraryYou will find a mix of veterinary cat classics, historically significant (and, in my opinion, some very wrong) books on cat care, radical discussions about animal rights and wildlife, and some favorite feline fiction. Obviously, many are out-of-print. I have left out bestsellers that I felt simply repeated information from more seminal sources. These choices are not a negative reflection on any other books or authors.

This list is not inclusive by any means, and my research stopped in 1998. Some political issues have changed since then, but the basic information is the same. Probably the most important changes will be in vaccine protocols and what communities are accepting as "right" behavior from shelter personnel and activists. If you have corrections regarding the books listed below, or a web link to the author, I would be happy to hear from you, but I have no plans to add to the list at this time.

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Real namePat Wagner

LocationDenver, Colorado

Emailpatpattern.com

Account typepublic, non-personal member

Connection NewsConnection News

URLs http://www.librarything.com/profile/StrayCat (profile)
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Common KnowledgeSeries (10), Awards (13), Characters (27), Places (7)

Member sinceAug 25, 2006