What We’re Reading: Cat Daddy

Jackson Galaxy is a superstar when it comes to fixing troubling cat behavior. On his hit show My Cat From Hell, now in its third season on Animal Planet, Galaxy trains both cat parents and their struggling felines, helping them find peace and happiness at home. In Cat Daddy: What the World’s Most Incorrigible Cat Taught Me About Life, Love, and Coming Clean, we learn where Galaxy’s passion for cats comes from, and pick up a ton of great advice for helping us understand how to live best with the cats in our family.

Galaxy was a struggling musician and drug addict working part-time at an animal shelter when his life changed forever. The big change? His cat, Benny. He has since passed on, but Benny was Galaxy’s biggest inspiration for more than thirteen years. He had been brought into the shelter Galaxy worked at with a shattered pelvis—he had been run over by a car— by a caregiver who described him as “unbondable.” Though he already felt a strangely empathetic connection with cats, this bond took on a whole new meaning when Galaxy adopted Benny.

Says Galaxy in the introduction to Cat Daddy:

“I believe that without Benny, I might still have been successful as a cat behaviorist. But my experience with him brought me to a place where I had no choice but to abandon my comfort. For years I did OK living a life of disengagement. The things I believed kept me sane—strict cinder-block boundaries, addiction, cynicism, and self- sabotage—were unacceptable if I was ever to hear him. And if I was unwilling to hear Benny, I was unwilling to hear, learn from, be with every other cat in the world. I had to get clean of alcohol, drugs, and food. I had to accept humility. I had to be present and willing to learn and change. Things I would never do for another human (or myself) I did for the sake of Benny.”

You’ll laugh and cry as you read this inspirational and amazing book. More importantly, after reading Cat Daddy you’ll walk away better able to connect with, appreciate, and love your own cats. Check it out—we’re sure you’ll enjoy it!

Tagged cat behavior, Cat Books