Poets Square: A Memoir in Thirty Cats

Gustafson’s tender debut details how she came to care for a colony of feral cats in Tucson, Ariz. Gustafson, who grew up “loving cats so much that I often pretended to be one,” and her boyfriend, Tim, moved into a small house in Tucson’s Poets Square neighborhood in 2020. After her first night there, she noticed and began naming a collection of cats who circled the property, realizing “right away [that] it would consume me.” She decided to launch an Instagram account focused on the animals, initially as a means of keeping in touch with her father, who lived on the other side of the country. As the account’s popularity grew, however, Gustafson came to realize that, after having many of her academic and professional achievements chalked up to her conventional beauty, she craved the “attention and praise for something that I could be certain was wholly unrelated to my looks.” While navigating her sudden online fame during the Covid pandemic, Gustafson began to notice how much easier it was for strangers to express concern for the cats—including ringleader Goldie and friendly Dr. Big Butt—than their struggling human neighbors. Such insights elevate the proceedings beyond a collection of diverting diary entries. One need not be a cat person to be enchanted by this. Illus. Agent: Caroline Eisenmann, Frances Goldin Literary. (Apr.)