Another Insane Devotion

On the Love of Cats and Persons

By: Peter Trachtenberg

Narrated by: Joe Geoffrey

From “a genuine American Dostoevsky” (The Washington Post): A dazzling, funny, bittersweet exploration of the mysteries of relationship, both human and animal. When his favorite cat Biscuit goes missing, Peter Trachtenberg sets out to find her. The journey takes him 700 miles and many years into his past - into the history of his relationships with cats and the history of his relationship with his wife F., who may herself be on the verge of disappearing.

What ensues is a work that recalls travel narratives from The Incredible Journey to W. G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn. Trachtenberg ponders the mysteries of feline intelligence (why do cats score worse on some tests than pigeons?), the origins of their domestication, their terrible treatment during the Middle Ages. He also looks at the riddle of why any of us loves whom we love and all the unforeseen places to which that devotion leads us.

©2012 Peter Trachtenberg (P)2013 Gildan Media LLC

Critic reviews

" Another Insane Devotion is more than a literary memoir... His crisscrossing passions are too busy and engaging to succumb to the genre's tendency to drearily impart life lessons. 'The nature of love' is an excuse for him to riff across centuries, from cat burial in ancient Cyprus to the lyrics of Sappho to marriage in the Torah to John Ruskin's unhappy wedding night to the novels of James Salter. This is surely the best book written about what it means to love cats, and to wonder if they love you, since Carl Van Vechten's 'The Tiger in the House.'" ( Chicago Tribune, 12/1/2012)

If you love cats…

This is the real life story of a man and his cat. I’m a woman with cats and I enjoyed this book very much.