"As she moves among stories of her cats, jobs, and elements of her past, Mori explores how, in the company of only animals and oneself, one can come to understand many different things that may elude comprehension in larger social settings. A muted memoir that’s both meandering and meditative." —Kirkus Reviews
"Highly Anticipated" —Michael Schaub, OC Register
“Kyoko Mori is an international treasure. Reading Cat and Bird reconfirms what Plotinus wrote, that each of us is on the ‘flight of the alone.’ This memoir, which essentially covers Kyoko’s entire life, is an intimate treatise on the art of solitude, but solitude with beloved cats. It is an inimitable natural history of the heart.” —Howard Norman, author of Come to the Window
“It takes a minutely perceptive eye, a discerning heart, and an exacting sense of language to write well about creatures as different as birds and cats. Kyoko Mori has them. She also captures the different kinds of love they evoke, and in doing so captures the ineffableness of human love and the mystery of its failures. A wonder of a book.” —Peter Trachtenberg, author of Another Insane Devotion and The Book of Calamities
“Cat and Bird stands alongside the best companion memoirs of the past century—My Dog Tulip, What I Don’t Know about Animals—but it also furthers the form with an inquisitiveness and a voice all its own. What a gift to meet a writer with this sharp eye for story and this idiosyncratic personal outlook through her four decades of feline intimates and myriad avian guests. I devoured this book and fell in love with its characters, and I can’t wait to share it with my clowder of cat-loving friends.” —Elena Passarello, author of Animals Strike Curious Poses
“There’s so much I love about this book. It is a moving meditation on love, grief, and the profound connection between people and animals. Mori is attuned to the rhythms of the natural world, and she provides a guide to finding our place in it.” —M. G. Lord, author of Forever Barbie and Astro Turf: The Private Life of Rocket Science
“We can be our truest selves with animals, and in this tender and lyric memoir, Kyoko Mori contemplates the unique blend of solitude and companionship a life lived among them can offer. The birds she rescues and those she observes in the wild offer a connection to the universe’s mysteries and to her own writer’s imagination, while her bonds with a series of unforgettable cats—Dorian, Oscar, Ernest, Algernon, Miles, Jackson, indelible characters all—tether her in mutual care and love to the material present. Cat and Bird will resonate deeply with anyone who has reckoned with the grief of intergenerational trauma and forged their own path toward a whole and individual life.” —Erin Keane, Salon editor in chief and author of Runaway: Notes on the Myths That Made Me
2023-12-06
A writer’s lessons and insights gleaned from a life spent with cats.
Mori, author of Polite Lies and The Dream of Water, unabashedly admits that her quest for solitude is central to her identity and critical to her contentment. “Both of my parents were charismatic extroverts,” she writes, “and I was the opposite. I looked forward to rainy days so I could play alone in my room.” While the author broaches the subjects of painful family relationships left behind in Japan, her marriage and its dissolution, and a host of personal and professional friendships, her latest book focuses on her series of beloved pet cats. As companions, dependents, and mysterious creatures in their own right, Mori’s cats have given inimitable meaning and an understanding of what it means to bond or be connected in a life otherwise shaped by seclusion. Observing and reflecting on the animals’ patterns of behavior as well as her own attachment to them, the author indicates a profound self-awareness and personal intention, rooted in and driven by her mother’s death by suicide and the author’s subsequent adolescence spent, unhappily, with her father and his new wife. Mori’s style is quiet and subtle, marked by steady pensiveness rather than a rich personal narrative. With sweet, touching humor, she teases metaphors and insights inspired both by her cats and by the birds that she studies and rehabilitates, but she largely leaves these thoughts to be fleshed out by readers. While this approach offers gravitas, it also reflects aloof detachment. As she moves among stories of her cats, jobs, and elements of her past, Mori explores how, in the company of only animals and oneself, one can come to understand many different things that may elude comprehension in larger social settings.
A muted memoir that’s both meandering and meditative.
