At the library: Review of ‘Millions of Cats’

The book, 'Millions of Cats,” written by Wanda Gag, is one of my favorite books that I have read in 2020. Gag's book won the Newberry Honor award in 1929. The book starts off by introducing the two main characters, an old man and his wife. The couple was very lonely, so the old man went searching for a cat to make his wife happy.

On his journey, he walked very far to find a hill that was covered in cats. The illustration shows that the man could only see cats, not the grass that would normally be seen on hills. The old man started hunting for the prettiest cat for his wife. He found one that he thought was perfect, but as he started to leave, he found another cat, then another, then he took all of the cats home with him.

The man then started his long journey back to his home with all the cats trailing behind him. The group came to a pond and soon after the cats started to drink, the pond became a hole in the ground without water. The cats also ate all the grass on the hills around them.

Once the man and his cats arrived home, the man's wife was startled. She only asked for one cat. The woman told her husband that she would let the cats decide who would get to stay. After the cats had a large fight, all the cats left. The couple looked around, worried that all the cats left, but they eventually found one. They took the scraggly kitten in and gave it a loving home. The couple was finally felt like they were not lonely anymore.

I love this story because it can be interpreted in many ways. The book makes readers question if beauty really matters. Did the couple really need the 'prettiest” cat? They really did not because they ended up being perfectly happy with the scraggly cat that they took in. I believe that readers can then think about humans, knowing that not everyone needs to be 'beautiful” to have a perfectly happy life or find a wonderful partner.

I believe that everyone should feel like they are beautiful, even if society's definition of beautiful is different. Think about all the cats that live in shelters waiting for their forever home. Many are not picked because they are not 'perfect.” Just like us humans, imperfections make us unique. Every cat or human deserves a loving home, like the cat that the couple found.

Thinking about our world today and the pandemic that we are trying to get through, I think that we can apply this book to our lives. When I first read over this book, I thought of the millions of cats that came with the old man as the millions of things that we face every day. Some of those things could be weighing us down or making us feel like we have a lot on our plates. Even if we have a million bad things happening to us right now, there can always be one good thing that comes out of it.

I like to think of the million quarreling cats as the bad things that we need to let go of and the one final cat as the good thing that we should hold onto.

If you would like to check out Wanda Gag's 'Millions of Cats,” you can give us a call at (319)-653-2726. You can also search our online catalog for more books about cats!