Triumphs, Trials & Trivia of Frontier Felines
ISBN: 979-8-376742-11-2
by Preston Lewis
Spur Finalist, 2024 Western Juvenile
Nonfiction, Western Writers of America
Old West Feline Hiss-tory
In More Cat Tales of the Old
West: Triumphs,
Trials & Trivia of Frontier Felines, two-time Spur
Award recipient Preston Lewis pulls together another amusing and
eclectic collection of articles from western newspapers reports on
frontier cats. In the sequel to his award-winning Cat Tales of the Old West: Poems, Puns &
Perspectives on Frontier Felines, Lewis provides another
engaging look at frontier felines from the perspective of
pioneering times.
In More Cat Tales of the
Old West, Lewis examines cats as frontier fighters,
homebodies, workers, miners, criminals, and actors with enough
colorful period anecdotes to satisfy both the cat lover and the cat
hater. With a foreword by New York
Times bestselling author Chris Enss, More Cat Tales of the Old
West provides an educational perspective on Old
West history.
Lewis has been called the greatest living authority on cats in the
Old West with articles on the subject in periodicals such
as Wild
West and Journal of the Wild West History
Assocation. His first book on the
topic, Cat Tales of the Old
West received a Will Rogers Bronze Medallion Award for
written western humor. The 32,000-word More Cat Tales of the Old
West is catnip for feline fans and frontier
aficionados interested in frontier history with a twist of the
cat's tail.
As
predictable as a hangover after an all-night bender, cats followed
prospectors to mining bonanzas across the West once entrepreneurs
realized herding cats—difficult as it may have been—was much easier
than extracting ore from the stubborn earth.
Though cats created headaches in towns where they proliferated because of their rambunctious nighttime noisemaking, they provided a cure-all for mining towns where rats and mice flourished amidst the detritus and filth of the typical mine operation.
For the poor man without the capital required for big-time, industrial mining, cat wrangling offered a high return on a small investment. In communities where cats proliferated, they were available for the taking—if a fellow could catch them. In boomtowns where they were needed, felines brought exorbitant prices to combat the rodent problem.
From California boomtowns in 1849 to the Yukon in 1899, cats became as necessary as picks, shovels, sluice boxes and grub to counter the millions of rodents that overran roughhewn communities on the fringe of civilization and civility. A mineral boom ultimately kicked off a cat boom.
The most famous cat drive in Old West history was the “house cats for cat houses” load delivered in June 1876 by Phatty Thompson to “the girls of the gulch,” as local prostitutes were called by Deadwood’s Pioneer-Times. Thompson had paid Cheyenne, Wyoming, boys a few cents for each cat they caught, then freighted the kitties to Deadwood to sell to “the lonely dancehall girls,” who by some accounts had requested them for companionship. Thompson sold the cats to the gals and other Deadwood denizens for up to a hundred and fifty times what he had paid for them. Every dollar Thompson received for his cat commerce was the equivalent of $27.85 in 2022 dollars.
From Sutter's Mill to the Klondike rushes, felines followed, generally against their will.
As a writer of history, I find More Cat Tales of the Old West: Triumphs, Trials & Trivia of Frontier Felines is a helpful research tool. As a reader fascinated by the stories of such creatures, it's pure entertainment. — Chris Enss, New York Times Bestselling Author