The Tribe of Tiger: Cats and Their Culture

Rating:
Summary: An intriguing, if not compelling, read
Review: An intriguing discussion of the author's belief that cats have culture (which is learned, as distinguished from behavior, which is genetic), based mostly on her experience with "big" cats in Africa, Asia, and elsewhere.

Worth reading just for her anecdotes of the changing ecoscape of sub-Saharan Africa. There are some gems here -- her discussion of tourists in Colorado seeing a Puma and mistakenly thinking "Awwww, look, the Puma looks just like a big version of our cute little kitty cat," instead of more wisely thinking "Whoa! Good thing our cat isn't that big."

Rating:
Summary: This is not a 4-star book
Review: As you can tell from the other reviews, the author of this book is all over the place. The early chapters tell of housecats, the middle chapters about lions and bushmen, the ending chapters about pumas in N. America. In fact, it turns out that parts of this book are from a collection of articles that had previously appeared in the New Yorker.

I found the middle portion about African lions, bushmen, and their disappearing habitat un-interesting. The sections on domestic cats and pumas, were much more interesting to me. She does include a LOT of her idle speculations about why cats behave as they do, but I liked that.

I can only whole-heartedly recommend this book to people with a special interest in house cats, Kalahari bushmen, and pumas. The rest of us will find it a mixed blessing.

Rating:
Summary: One of the best natural history behavior books
Review: Disregard the negative reviews or comments previously written on this book.
This is one of the best natural history behavior books ever written and the best on cats behavior, both wild and domestic.

Rating:
Summary: Excellant
Review: Fun to read and full of facts and anecdotal evidence about various species of felines.

Rating:
Summary: not a compelling read
Review: given the title, i expected the book to contain ancedotes, stories and personal observations. This book does contain all of the above, but they were not as numerous, as informative, nor as insightful as i had hoped. Possibly having lived with cats all my life, and having seen a few nature shows on big cats, made this book kind of uninformative for me.

Rating:
Summary: Mislead by Cover Photo...
Review: I generally liked her other book, the Social Lives of Dogs, and in fact read it twice over the course of the previous year. I felt as though I learned a lot about canine behavior and their social organization. This book however was a terrible disappointment for me. I checked it out of the library after giving one as a gift to a friend, only to find that there was very little written about house cats (my primary interest), and all the talk of big cats and anecdotes from the author's many years in Africa seemed indulgent and not even terribly insightful for those interested in these topics.

I'd urge you to look for a copy in your local library or bookstore and scan through it before commitment to the cover price.

Rating:
Summary: A rewarding glimpse into the lives of cats!
Review: I own three cats and found this book to be informative, funny and touching. The author shares personal experience from lifelong observations of all types of cats. If you love cats, this is the book for you. Most of the stories are funny and touching but some are rather sad and made me feel disbelief at people's cruelty towards animals. I loved this book! Charith Varga ([e-mail]), Seattle, Washington

Rating:
Summary: The Circus culture
Review: I spend a lot of time in India and am very knowledgeable about tigers. I was absolutely amazed to read that Ms Thomas thought it perfectly acceptable for tigers to be kept in tiny cages, and dragged around America only to emerge in a circus ring and then be put back in a cage. Ms Thomas seems to think this a wonderful life guaranteed to keep tigers alert and happy, and reccomends the practice continue. She even sings the praises of John Cuneo who breeds tigers for circuses in the US and is currently being prosecuted for animal cruelty.
On the tiger in a circus: Ôthe owners live in small trailers and tigers live in travellin cages on wheels, each cage about twice the length of the tiger who inhabits it. Sometimes nothing beteter than a large tarp or the edge of a circus tent shelters these little groups of people and tigers just barely protecting them from wind sun & rainÕ

The tiger is a top predator, it is extremely intelligent and built to hunt. That is its raison d'etre.

Even when not hunting a tiger will prowl may be 15 miles a night.
They spend 2 years teaching their cubs to hunt.
If Ms Thomas seriously think that learning a few miserable tricks to perform in a ring, keep an animal such as this stimulated and happy, she clearly has no knowledge of tigers at all and frankly makes one wonder what if anything else she writes about in the book has any validity.

If you are interested in tigers, don't buy this ridiculous book buy anything by Valmik Thapar, a man who really does know about this majestic predator.

Rating:
Summary: Skip it
Review: I think her dog book was good cuz she's a dog person. She's not a cat person, and it shows.

Rating:
Summary: A serious insight into the feral nature of housecats.
Review: I was never a cat lover. I was definitely a dog person, and I (like all former dog owners) think my dog Jingles was the best dog in the whole wide world. Now we have a cat named Maya. All the myths I ever had about cats were turned on on their ear. In a similar fashion, The Tribe of Tiger gives a powerful insight into these animals without being overly sweet. Very often books of this type become unreadable to non-cat owners who get sick from the sugary references to cats at their cutest. Instead, Thomas examines all manner of cats, from the plight of the African lions to the triumph of the house cat. I wasn't aware that cats had a social organization at all, but unlike dogs (who have a distinct order in the pack), cats treat one cat as leader, with the others all equal in a kind of spoked-wheel formation. When you find out just how important it is that a cat meet another cat's gaze (and the trials of a blind cat who was unable to do so), you will have a new respect for cats, and this book.