The Lion in the Living Room: How House Cats Tamed Us and Took Over the World
Written by Abigail Tucker
Narrated by Arden Hammersmith
4.5/5
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About this audiobook
House cats rule bedrooms and back alleys, deserted Antarctic islands, even cyberspace. And unlike dogs, cats offer humans no practical benefit. The truth is they are sadly incompetent mouse-catchers and now pose a threat to many ecosystems. Yet, we love them still.
In the “eminently readable and gently funny” (Library Journal, starred review) The Lion in the Living Room, Abigail Tucker travels through world history, natural science, and pop culture to meet breeders, activists, and scientists who’ve dedicated their lives to cats. She visits the labs where people sort through feline bones unearthed from the first human settlements, treks through the Floridian wilderness in search of house cats-turned-hunters on the loose, and hangs out with Lil Bub, one of the world’s biggest celebrities—who just happens to be a cat.
“Fascinating” (Richmond Times-Dispatch) and “lighthearted” (The Seattle Times), Tucker shows how these tiny felines have used their relationship with humans to become one of the most powerful animals on the planet. A “lively read that pounces back and forth between evolutionary science and popular culture” (The Baltimore Sun), The Lion in the Living Room suggests that we learn that the appropriate reaction to a house cat, it seems, might not be aww but awe.
Abigail Tucker
Abigail Tucker’s work has been featured in the Best American Science and Nature Writing series. She is the New York Times bestselling author of The Lion in the Living Room: How House Cats Tamed Us and Took Over the World, named a Best Science Book of 2016 by Library Journal and Forbes, now translated into thirteen languages. A correspondent for Smithsonian magazine, she lives in New Haven, Connecticut, with her husband and four (equally amazing) children.
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Reviews for The Lion in the Living Room
38 ratings3 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A bit depressing for cat lovers. We just want abject praise of our favorite feline friends. However, it was a very interesting look at how house cats have evolved (or not evolved) over the years. Also poses some very thought provoking questions about the morality of human's tendency to perpetuate the house cat species wherever they go. No doubt there will be cats in space with us or on the first colony on Mars.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I'll never look at the cats in the same way, amazing !Congrats to the author.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I was listening this book while my "baby", Miss Audrey, was beside me, pouring and making me the most adorable face ever. Was she also listening and understanding everything ? Well... just loved the book. And I do believe cats will rule the world. Anyway, much better to have an anarchist government of cats than the neoliberal model of today. Long live the Queens and Kings.