Cultivating Mad Cow

by K.A. Littlewood

Kathryn Littlewood’s Cultivating Mad Cow is a transformative story. It’s a story about love, passion, desperation, mental illness, but most of all it’s a story about human connection. It carefully observes how those deep connections can save lives. Kathryn, a child protection social worker, became severely mentally ill in 2004. During several months of isolation, oscillating between mania, depression and psychosis, building a nine foot papier maché penis in her garden and getting herself arrested every time she left the house, Kathryn became connected to the outside world through a telephone counsellor Barry White, who reaches out to Kathryn in an attempt to save her from the chaos of her world, but when his own professional boundaries begin to be compromised, the tragedy happens. On 4th October that year, Kathryn tried to end her own life in the most violent of ways. The human connection continues when the surgeons at the hospital battle to save her life and attempt to her with some quality of life amidst the mass of complex injuries she sustained.
This unique, sometimes funny, sometimes sad story will leave you in no doubt about the importance of the power of human connection, love and human resilience.

193 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 25, 2015

Reviews

[Cass Glaves · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kathryn, I ❤️❤️❤️❤️ your book! I share some of your experiences and wish you nothing but well from here onwards in your life. A brave brave woman!

[Carmel Page · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a crazily mad mixed up life splashed into a giant puddle of chaos and energetically stirred by a psychotic social-worker mum who loves to write and who loves a man in a call centre she has never met. It is an amazing read, a few pages in and you are living the life of a desperately ill woman who behaves insanely and is in a state of energetic freefall with no one managing to give her any meaningful support. As someone who is familiar with observing psychosis it made total sense and it made me laugh and it made me cry. I recommend it.

[Remy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Astounding

This was by far the most real,engaging and emotional book I have read in a very long time. I was taken along on the whole journey with the author going through many emotions with her. It’s an incredible story and has given me some understanding around around suicide and bipolar that I am grateful for.

[Lou · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

[Steven Kay · Rating 4 out of 5]

The adage that that everyone has a novel in them is rather old and tiresome. Everyone lives a life, and to them that life is interesting. It is very likely they had mountains to climb and demons to tackle — that is part of being a human after all. The question is whether that story is going to be entertaining enough for people to want to buy it and devote time to it. There are many such self-published personal stories — self-published for a very good reason: they were interesting for the author to write, and possibly for their friends and family to read, but that’s it. They may well have proved therapeutic for the author. None of that is to say they should never have been published, however. There is a niche for such things.
Cultivating mad cow is not in that category of memoir. It is well written and is engaging. The life journey of the author has been far from an ordinary one — being on the very extremes of human experience. It will make you question life and what it means to you, as you follow Kathryn’s story. It is not a light read, though it is funny to in a tragicomedy sort of way. I started reading it whilst under pressure at work and feeling a little stressed, and had to stop as it was freaking me out a bit, so I read The Water Babies instead, returning to Cultivating Mad Cow when I was on a more even keel.
I mentioned funny bits — I believe we have the author’s permission to laugh, even though it is in a slightly uncomfortable way as it is humorous in a mad sort of way — literally. You question whether you are laughing with and not at the protagonist.
It makes you start to question the meaning of mental illness and normality and just how thin the divide between them is. It is a book with a happy ending however. I make no apologies for that spoiler —read it, learn from it, enjoy it and take comfort from knowing it will all work out in the end.
You could describe it as a muesli bar of a book — it has something to chew on, is good for you, but still enjoyable. It is certainly not a marshmallow book — full of air, cloying and lacking in substance.