Bonds of Affection

While working on my own book projects, based on Thoreau’s writings on animals, I had a couple of ideas for spin-off minibooks, one of which would collect Thoreau’s journal entries on the family’s Maltese cat Min, and cats in general. ("At Lee’s Cliff,” he wrote on Christmas Day of 1856, “I pushed aside the snow with my foot and got some fresh green catnip for Min.” Why should the cat not get a present, after all?)

Like some other book ideas I’ve had, it turned out this one had already been done, more or less.

Bonds of Affection: Thoreau on Dogs and Cats was published by the University of Massachusetts as part of its series The Spirit of Thoreau. The books are nicely produced, with handsome typography (though the square brackets are peculiar and distracting) and wood engravings by Barry Moser.

Editor Wesley T. Mott has chosen to include not only passages that deal directly with cats and dogs, but some that mention them only in passing, like this one from March 26, 1860:

The earliest willows are now in the gray, too advanced to be silvery,—mouse or maltese-cat color.