BenTha'er-Horizons

GPS Your Cat

There is a book out where a cat owner put a GPS unit on her traveling cat to see where this particular feline visited in their area.
The article is found in The Atlantic and can be found here. One point determined was that the cat liked to visit about three homes and look at their image in the window. Just like a cat……………how do we look today and will you feed me?

The cat came back.

But why? And what was he doing while he was gone?

These questions plague cat owners across the world, and they form the backbone of the new book, Lost Cat: A True Story of Love, Desperation, and GPS Technology. As author Caroline Paul and illustrator Wendy MacNaughton chart their discoveries in the feline world, they unfurl an uncommonly charming and wise tale.

The narrative centers on Paul's two cats, Fibula and Tibia, and what happens when the latter mysteriously leaves home for six weeks -- and then returns. Paul becomes fixated on discovering where he'd gone (and where she suspects he continues to go) with the aid of technology. MacNaughton, Paul's partner, rides shotgun on the quest, documenting the trip in a series of improbably hilarious and profound drawings. There are so many good jokes and cute kitties, you can almost miss the terror of loving something (or someone) that provides the book's depth.

There are twists and turns along the way (including a brilliant setpiece in an animal communication class), but a sly allegory emerges from all the drawing and writing: Technology can do many amazing things, but no GPS unit or CatCam can tell us what questions we should be asking in the first place.

To be optimistic, though, the human process of piecing together the tech's failures and successes can build towards the kind of realization that Paul comes to at the end of the book. "I didn't need to turn on the computer and re-analyze the maps. I didn't need to scour the photos. I didn't need to have an animal-human conversation," Paul writes. "Clear and bright as the pink of a kitty trail on a satellite map was this final truth: Tibby had just not wanted to be at home."
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