Today's review

Overrated and sort of boring,August 13, 2009 Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World by Vicki Myron WAIT -- before you start making negative responses to this review, stop now and know -- I am a cat lover! But this book really didn't click with me. I thought the book would be more about a library cat but it was about the author and her troubled and difficult life; it was about how to run a library and the people who worked there; it was about people who visited the library and who apparently went crazy about this one cat, Dewey, who was so special that people came from around the world to see him, touch him and film him. OK. Fine. It was an interesting enough story, but I got bored by all the details about library operation, budgets, meetings and minutiae. The long descriptions about the history of Spencer, Iowa and the people who lived and farmed there was only marginally appealing. The description of Dewey's days and life were fine, but what was all that continued discussion of his dietary habits and bowel movements? I must admit that although I have been a cat owner for many years, I have a little difficulty when people say they can tell what their pet is thinking and when they give them other human attributes, sensitivities, and feelings. I have never been a fan of too much anthropomorphizing because I can't buy into it. I know this opinion and review will not set well with all of those hundreds who rave about this story, but it was too much of the author's autobiography and about Spencer, Iowa, than it was anything else. At the end of the day, no one knows for sure if animals LOVE people or what animals are capable of feeling or thinking. To me, assigning thoughts and feelings to animals from the human perspective is taking liberties more closely associated with FICTION and fantasy novels than it is nonfiction. I wanted to like this book but frankly, I was just glad to skim the last third of it and close the book.