The Cat's Meow by Jonathan B. Losos

 

Look, one of the things about being adopted by a local stray cat is that you develop something of an interest in cats; if you have a brain that works much like mine, this means you end up reading books about cats. I read this book about cats this afternoon. It's more of a read-in-a-sitting kind of book than most books about living with cats are, mainly because it's not a living-with-cats book (though the author does enjoy the company of several cats on a daily-living basis). The author is a biologist and puts some work into unpacking the current state of knowledge on many things cat--everything from which wild species they derive from to how domesticated they are to what they get up to if they're let out of the house to wander to what sorts of shenanigans cat breeders are getting up to. It's a very readable and informative book, it doesn't feel written down to non-biologists, and it's not likely to be completely over many readers' heads.