Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Feline Cultures: Cats Create Their History

Feline Cultures: Cats Create Their History

Baratay, Éric
Burk, Drew S.

Paperback

Series: Animal Voices / Animal Worlds

General World HistoryZoology

ISBN10: 0820365149
ISBN13: 9780820365145
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Published: Jul 1 2024
Pages: 280
Weight: 1.00
Height: 0.90 Width: 6.10 Depth: 9.10
Language: English

Using testimonies written between the middle of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the twenty-first, nourished by ethology and the human and social sciences, Feline Cultures extends the unique track of animal studies that Éric Baratay pursues from book to book. As with his Animal Biographies: Toward a History of Individuals, Baratay breaks the model of human exceptionalism to create innovative accounts of these animals' lives in a way that challenges the reader's thinking about animals.

Baratay is not interested in seeing how humans think about or treat these animals. Instead, he chooses to observe the animal's perspective to document how individual cats have carried out their lives. He writes from the point of view of these animals to understand what they felt and experienced and how they reacted. Whether they be street cats, farm cats, pet cats, companion cats, or catdogs, cats show a great plasticity of behavior. This book establishes that cats have their own cultures and adaptations and, therefore, their own history.

Through tight portraits, the dynamic construction of what we can call cultures is revealed. Here we are far from the eternal portrait of the cat--independent, unpredictable, and mysterious--that has become commonplace. For each of the domestic cats whose existence can be reconstructed from his sources, Baratay pays attention to their perceptions of the world, their sensations and their emotions, their sensitivity and character, their bodily expressiveness, and their interactions with the environment, other animals, and humans. Ethology becomes, under the alert pen of Éric Baratay, an ethnology.

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