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Cat Wrangling Made Easy: Maintaining Peace and Sanity in Your Multicat Home: Maintaining Peace and Sanity in Your Multi-cat Home
The number of households with cats is on the up - and more and more often they multi-moggie households. This requires a lot of planning, cleaning, discipline, and diplomacy on the part of the owners!"Cat Wrangling Made Easy" is a comprehensive and - despite its lighthearted look - a no-nonsense, easy-to-use guide to having a stress-free, clean, and comfortable living environment for you and your cats.It deals with everything you need to know about staying sane in a multi-cat house - from making introductions, maintaining a litter tray, and dealing with dinner time to interspecies relationships, bringing home another kitty, and much, much more.
290 pages, Kindle Edition
First published December 1, 2007
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45 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
February 24, 2015
This was a decent book with a lot of really good information. The author gives a lot of good advice on how to deal with many of the issues faced by multi-cat owners. A huge portion of the book is dedicated to litter box issues and the section on cat hierarchy was truly fascinating. The chapter on disaster planning is particularly helpful.
So why didn't I give it 5 stars? A few reasons.
The author admits early on that she decided to go with a more lighthearted, conversational, slightly humorous approach. Overall it worked well but a few times it fell flat. The chapter titles in particular were so cutesy that I felt like if you wanted to just pick up the book and read the chapter related to your immediate issues that it wasn't necessarily easy to tell which chapter talked about what.
Some of her information or statements just seemed a little questionable. For example:
-In the chapter about litter boxes she recommends cleaning boxes daily and then scrubbing/disinfecting monthly. She mentions in an aside that a friend has decided litter boxes are so inexpensive that she just tosses old ones after a month and buys new. The "reduce/reuse/recycle" hippie in me cringed at the waste.
-She mentions that cats should normally drink about two cups of water a day (including water that is in their food). That seems beyond excessive to me. I have 7 cats currently. They are most definitely not drinking 14 cups of water--even taking into account what's in their canned food. A new or inexperienced owner might be concerned. (I remember my first dog and trying to force her to eat the recommended amount on the bag. Very stressful.)
-She suggests as a cost saving measure multi-cat owners could use large dog doses of flea treatment drops and split them among several cats. Then half a paragraph later mentions some dog treatments may be toxic to cats. I worked in a vet clinic at one point. I've seen cats die from inappropiately administered dog flea treatment. It's fast and ugly. And horrifying. I feel really strongly she should have emphasized the potential YOU COULD KILL YOUR CAT more.
-I know she was trying to give useful information in her product recommendations, but some of them were so frequent I really had to wonder if she was getting a kickback. (Especially for ComfortZone, which she seems to think is a miracle worker--I've tried it multiple times and never noticed a difference.)
But having said all that, I do think this is a worthwhile book. She makes helpful recommendations (tidbits like having electric ties available to put carriers together in an emergency) and covers a lot of ground. And she's realistic that sometimes you may need to rehome a kitty if things just don't work out--and she supplies a large number of resources for helping people in that situation.
I definitely would recommend the book, just note it's not the definitive resource.
So why didn't I give it 5 stars? A few reasons.
The author admits early on that she decided to go with a more lighthearted, conversational, slightly humorous approach. Overall it worked well but a few times it fell flat. The chapter titles in particular were so cutesy that I felt like if you wanted to just pick up the book and read the chapter related to your immediate issues that it wasn't necessarily easy to tell which chapter talked about what.
Some of her information or statements just seemed a little questionable. For example:
-In the chapter about litter boxes she recommends cleaning boxes daily and then scrubbing/disinfecting monthly. She mentions in an aside that a friend has decided litter boxes are so inexpensive that she just tosses old ones after a month and buys new. The "reduce/reuse/recycle" hippie in me cringed at the waste.
-She mentions that cats should normally drink about two cups of water a day (including water that is in their food). That seems beyond excessive to me. I have 7 cats currently. They are most definitely not drinking 14 cups of water--even taking into account what's in their canned food. A new or inexperienced owner might be concerned. (I remember my first dog and trying to force her to eat the recommended amount on the bag. Very stressful.)
-She suggests as a cost saving measure multi-cat owners could use large dog doses of flea treatment drops and split them among several cats. Then half a paragraph later mentions some dog treatments may be toxic to cats. I worked in a vet clinic at one point. I've seen cats die from inappropiately administered dog flea treatment. It's fast and ugly. And horrifying. I feel really strongly she should have emphasized the potential YOU COULD KILL YOUR CAT more.
-I know she was trying to give useful information in her product recommendations, but some of them were so frequent I really had to wonder if she was getting a kickback. (Especially for ComfortZone, which she seems to think is a miracle worker--I've tried it multiple times and never noticed a difference.)
But having said all that, I do think this is a worthwhile book. She makes helpful recommendations (tidbits like having electric ties available to put carriers together in an emergency) and covers a lot of ground. And she's realistic that sometimes you may need to rehome a kitty if things just don't work out--and she supplies a large number of resources for helping people in that situation.
I definitely would recommend the book, just note it's not the definitive resource.
August 25, 2008
Not what I expected, and much more than how to keep peace with multiple cats. Addresses health issues, emergencies, end of life decisions, how to decide how many cats are too many, and the ever-popular litter box issues. Highly recommnded!
July 5, 2009
After suddenly becoming mom to four abandoned kittens, I needed help FAST(as I have always been strictly a "dog person"). Having gotten them through the difficult bottle-feeding stage I needed advice on how cats think and behave. This book helped me to understand my new kittens.
August 15, 2020
Purchase Cat Wrangling Made Easy here for just $12!
This is the "What to Expect When You're Expecting" of cat books. The book has many suggestions to help your cats get along. Very easy to read, it’s like you’re listening to a friend. The author knows a great deal about feline friendship, and she shares all of it in an easy to follow manner.
Alicia, The Book Grocer
This is the "What to Expect When You're Expecting" of cat books. The book has many suggestions to help your cats get along. Very easy to read, it’s like you’re listening to a friend. The author knows a great deal about feline friendship, and she shares all of it in an easy to follow manner.
Alicia, The Book Grocer
January 21, 2016
I checked this book out from the library because I kittennapped a semiferal kitten the same day and figured it might be handy to read a book on 'cat wrangling' (I love this term), in other words how to convince my other cat that the new kitten is ok.My cat and new kitten turned out not to need much help from me after all, but there was some good information and advice in this book anyway. There was not much about introducing new kittens, in particular, and nothing about training feral kittens (nor did my library have any books on this topic), but this was still a useful book to read. It did make me wish I had the resources to have brought home more than one kitten, since the author makes having lots of cats sound so much easier than I would imagine it to be, but if one really follows the advice in this book it is not too likely that reading this book would lead to having too many cats. (I am writing this as the new kitten is perched on my knee. He wished there were more cat pictures in this book.) Actually there were several spots in this book where drawings or photos would have helped, especially where the text is about specific products, cat body language, or disease symptoms. More cute cat pictures wouldn't have hurt either.
January 12, 2011
I bought this book because for the first time in my life I have a multicat home. I’ve had cats all my life, but 2 was the most I’ve had. Now I own 4 and it’s quite an odyssey to keep peace between them. They are mostly indoor cats, but I let them out supervised 2 or 3 days a week. Some days it’s literally like wrangling cats. The book is very good. It covers pretty much everything from feeding, to health, play, territories, litter box decorum, etc. Dusty Rainbolt gives a lot of advice based on her own experience with cats, and the book has lots of information with web pages regarding these issues. Some of the web pages are great. I learned a lot about cat’s illness prevention and behavior. I am applying some of the advice at home and it has worked well so far. The book even encouraged me to build my cats a cat tree by myself. If you have many cats or are planning to do so, this is a good book to start with.
December 26, 2010
Christmas gift from Alpha. And of course since I'm temporarily fostering two kittens in the office, needed to refer to it for any helpful tips.
After a morning perusal of most of the book, with kittens on my lap, must say that it is a very good reference for anyone just getting into fostering. (I will say with close to fifteen years now of multiple-cat living I did learn a few new things. And while I think dome might find specific brands being endorsed-- I actually welcome it, since goodness knows, for example, trying to solve a cat peeing problem is a desperate situation!)
After a morning perusal of most of the book, with kittens on my lap, must say that it is a very good reference for anyone just getting into fostering. (I will say with close to fifteen years now of multiple-cat living I did learn a few new things. And while I think dome might find specific brands being endorsed-- I actually welcome it, since goodness knows, for example, trying to solve a cat peeing problem is a desperate situation!)
October 3, 2011
I was a little turned off by the idea of megacat families ("if you don't have time to pay attention to each cat each day, you have too many...") but thought the section on cat communication through body language was really interesting. We are planning to introduce a third feline into our home which will be a bit tricky with the two wackos we already have, so I plan to make extensive use of the book's detailed instructions on how to do that.
September 9, 2010
The title along makes this book a 4 star book. It was fun, thorough, and informative. Not sure if it helped Sushi and new kitty Miso get along, but it did give plenty of ideas and experiences to help me understand cats better.
September 18, 2015
At times it read like a shopping list of cat care, and some recommended products (like flower essences) are scientifically questionable. Otherwise, had good information but wasn't well organized and often repetitive.
Want to read
May 14, 2009I really need this book!!
November 15, 2011
A practical, easy to read guide for helping you live a peaceful life with one cat or several.
August 4, 2014
This is a very informative book for cat owners. Will keep it for future reference, should any problem areas arise.
July 10, 2016
Important read if you have more than one cat. Even if you think you know a lot about cats you will learn more.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews