Andrew Bloomfield

Excellent prologue; may be the best I've come across in years. Gets right to point of book.

In Call of the Cats Bloomfield comes across as something of a lost soul. He’s trying to find himself, truth, a mission, love. He lives in Nepal for 2 years, picking up the culture, and learns how to prioritize what is important and what’s not, how to manage with very little, respect for all life, and more.

Back in the US, he has lots of good ideas but no true passion. He reconnects with a former friend and her sister, moving into and sharing their rental. Tries to sell screen plays and stories in Hollywood unsuccessfully and falls back on former jobs.

He discovers that the rental’s backyard is a little oasis of the country filled with racoons and coyotes attacking groups of feral cats and their kittens. Hearing screams of pain and seeing mauled cat bodies, he and the sisters decide to try to help the cats. Andrew sits out in the yard at night to witness what goes on. He gets to know the sights, sounds, behaviors, personalities of all the animals. How the cats try to protect their litters which mostly doesn’t work too well.

Slowly he develops a relationship with these feral cats by feeding them and helping protect them from predators. He realizes its not enough and fortunately finds a vet who will treat the cats at a discount. Later he learns about organizations promoting the Trap, Neuter, Return (TNR) policy. He and the sisters use creative strategies to trap mostly the female cats, get them spayed so they don’t birth more litters, and then return them to the backyard. They shelter some of the kittens in their apartment. And in time the feral cat population does go down.

Panic sets in when Andrew and the sisters are asked to re-locate by the rental’s owner. They opt for a short-term location because it’s good for some of the indoor cats. But for those still living in the backyard they ask a few caring neighbors to watch over them.

Glad I read this; its smart, engaging, and helps readers understand the lives of feral cats and the people that help them.… (más)

I sincerely hope that Andrew Bloomfield makes enough money off of [Call of the Cats] to help take care of the many cats he has taken in since his first cat awakening more than twenty years ago. That was when Bloomfield landed in a house with a jungly backyard and discovered that it hosted a colony of feral cats. When the terrible death of a kitten brought him into direct contact with the colony, his heart opened to them and he was caught. He tells the story as day by day, kitten by kitten, then year by year he and his roommates, two sisters, became the caretakers of this group of cats. Bloomfield alternates the stories about particular cats with history and information about cats, his own musings, and some of his other life experiences (some of them kinda shady-sounding to me!). The book is a little uneven, there are bits that get too maudlin or woo-woo for my taste, but it is decently written and put together well. The best parts are his direct interactions with the cats--finding the perfect vet, his description of spending many nights outside guarding the cats from coyotes and giant raccoons. Through it all Bloomfield never ceases to be amazed that this has happened to him, that in middle-age, unmarried and childless, this piece of his soul, nurturing and responsible,emerged and took over his life. ***1/2… (más)