The Way of the Cat
Teaching Humans to Be
By Xena

       I, Winston, a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, write this review, because my human has no concept of how to review animals’ writing, with the exception of her review of The Pekinese Who Saved Civilization by my good friend Sir Addison Silber Howell, Esq. I did not want her to do injustice to Xena’s The Way of the Cat: Teaching Humans to Be. I generously give her the credit. Dogs outmatch humans in noble self-sacrifice.

     I take issue with the constant feline denigration of canines. Anubis of Egypt, where Xena brags that cats were worshipped, had a greyhound’s head. Xena says, “Our brains are more like human brains than dog brains are. The order in rank, I believe, is cat brain, human brain, and then dog brain.”

     If that’s the case, I must be exceptionally smart for my species, because I looked over the slight to my brothers and sisters and saw the brilliance in Xena’s views. Contrast that with humans, who write books such as Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them and Bushwhacked to express how much they hate each other’s politics.

      Forget the human nonsense and read Xena’s book, with amusing quotes from real cats just like you. But how about a little cross-species cooperation and including what dogs have to say about cats? Sir Addison admits he speaks Cat. Yes indeed, this book does slight dogs in the same old tired catdogma.

     I won’t gnaw that old tired bone. Instead, I will praise Xena’s advice on distracting humans while they work (my human spends far too much time at the computer and none with me, which is another reason I wrote this review), teaching them the importance of naps; giving them communication skills they fruitlessly spend hundreds of dollars trying to acquire from other humans; and just giving them love and acceptance. I will concede to Xena that we dogs cannot purr and our bark annoys rather than entrances humans (you don’t see “No Purring” courses and gadgets), but our wagging tails compensate.

     Forget teaching humans. How about teaching dogs and cats to just get along?