From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2013:
Paw Prints at Owl Cottage
by Denis O’Connor
St. Martin’s Press (c/o MacMillan, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010), 2013.
232 pages, hardcover. $19.99.
Denis O’Connor, retired from a career in academia, established himself as an author of best-selling cat stories in the United Kingdom first, with Paw Tracks in the Moonlight (2009), about his rescued cat Toby Jug, who died in 1978, and then Paw Tracks at Owl Cottage, concerning the cats O’Connor and his wife have kept since reacquiring the house where O’Connor lived with Toby Jug.
Substituting the word “prints” for “tracks” in the titles, O’Connor brought his first cat story to the U.S. successfully in 2012, and, as in the U.K., now follows with the sequel.
From a humane perspective, unfortunately, O’Connor’s growing popularity may be viewed with alarm.
Paw Prints at Owl Cottage bills itself in a cover blurb as “four kittens, a crumbling English cottage, one touching tale of life in the British countryside.” The four kittens are all purebred Maine coons purchased from a well-known breeder. O’Connor writes with joy and affection of the cats––Pablo, Max, Luis and Carlos––and devotedly provides them with love, food, veterinary care, and grooming, which longhaired Maine coons tend to need more than most other cats.
However, O’Connor balked at neutering the first of his cats, the free-roaming Pablo. “I hated to do that to him,” O’Connor says. Undoubtedly Pablo contributed to creating unwanted litters. But when O’Connor added to his feline family he never considered adopting a homeless half-Maine coon from a shelter or cat rescue society.
Carlos, O’Connor’s second Maine coon, was neutered and micro-chipped, but was also allowed to wander. A neighbor found Carlos’ roadkilled remains a week after he disappeared.
After that, O’Connor built a protective enclosure for his other cats, enabling them to enjoy the outdoors without roaming.
The cat stories in Paw Prints at Owl Cottage are delightful, and the book illuminates the special bond between O’Connor and his cats, but O’Connor is so slow to learn responsible cat caretaking, and so ambivalent about the lessons that the book cannot be said to have much instructive value.
––Debra J. White
