Shadow Cats

by Janet Jensen

The author, an environmental editor and writer, as well as an animal rescuer, shares the experiences of the people, such as animal control officers and kind neighbors, whose lives have been powerfully affected by the plight of New York's homeless felines, who are also known as "shadow cats." Original.

Genres: Cats

224 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2002

Reviews

[Liliana Pavier · Rating 5 out of 5]

My boyfriend picked this up for me in a chaotically organised second hand book shop and, given its dated cover and kitschy name, I expected it to be little more than light reading. I was completely wrong, I could hardly get through a chapter without crying. It’s been a long time since a book moved me in this way. Janet Jensen’s description of the cats is characterful and delightful, even as she restrains from projecting human personality onto them; but what got me over and over again, was the displays of generosity and kindness of ordinary people, towards the cats they rescued/ neutered and returned.

I am a cat lover and perhaps more susceptible than others to stories about cats in need, but if you have ever loved an animal, surely this book will touch your heart.

Not to mention the felt tensions between the urban and the natural, the human and the animal. In the last pages of the book Jensen refers to Bill Mckibben’s book The End of Nature, there are no truly natural places left, and I quote Jensen here: “no places untouched by the enormous footprint of human activity. Traces of dangerous man-made chemicals are found in the arctic ice caps, human activity has eroded the atmosphere’s protective ozone layer, species are disappearing at a rate not seen since the end of the dinosaur’s reign, and we have, in a century, altered the weather systems to which life-forms have adapted over millennia. To be successful, plants and animals must find ways to live in this altered world.”

If you read this book looking for instruction you are limiting your experience of it. It is a story of resistance and kindness; more of a memoir than a manual.

[Peacegal · Rating 3 out of 5]

When Jensen discovers a colony of feral cats beside her NYC apartment building, she knows she must do something to help them. And thus she enters the clandestine and loosely-connected world of cat rescuers and feeders. Jenson engaged in her cat adventures before Alley Cat Allies began publicizing the TNR (trap/neuter/return) method of caring for feral felines. This is unfortunate for Jensen, as she takes several of these wild animals into her home, with predictable results. Eventually, she gets involved in TNR as the better way to control ferals.

Unfortunately, Jensen pads her book with silly dialogues between feral cats and a psychic "animal communicator." Readers who are not fans of the woo-woo stuff will be unamused at what could have been a more serious and helpful book.

[Jennifer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Certain aspects of this book were interesting - the process of trapping, fixing, and releasing cats, how to manage a feral cat community, etc. While I believe that there are many things about human - cat relationships that cannot be fully explained, this book headed off into a new age direction that I could not get behind.

[Hanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thanks to having read this book, I was able to figure out what to do when I found my first feral cat.

[Helen Geng · Rating 3 out of 5]

Re-read May 2020