Berton writes well and he clearly enjoys the company of cats but why oh why did he wait so many years to start spaying and neutering his cats? ( )

I admire Pierre Berton. He did a lot to popularize Canadian history and his life's work is impressive. He was 84 when he died in 2004 and as far as I can tell he was writing up to the end because his last book, Prisoners of the North, was published in 2005.

In all the time I've been aware of Berton I had never heard how much of a cat person he was. This little book chronicles the cats that have been in his life from his time as a youngster growing up in the Depression in Victoria until close to the end of his life. There are some great stories about cats here. But, and it's a big but, I part company with Berton in his admiration of people who support large numbers of cats. I know it must be hard when you love animals to euthanize them but allowing them to take over your house and life is an illness. At the very least all cats in that sort of situation should be neutered so that they don't produce any more cats. Although Berton seems to have come around to the idea of having his own female cats spayed close to the end of his life for many years he seems to have allowed them to breed indiscriminately. I can't believe that a popular writer like Berton didn't have the financial wherewithal to have a veterinarian operate on them. He talks about how his mother would drown the kittens which I think is far crueler than neutering the mother. And nowhere does Berton ever talk about neutering the male cats who can be responsible for producing far more kittens than a female.

So, although I enjoyed the stories about the individual cats, I was disappointed overall with this book. ( )