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Ottawa launch of Cats: A History by Rod Phillips

Published on May 5, 2026

Time to read: 2 minutes

Professor Rod Phillips’s latest book, Cats: A History, will be published by Johns Hopkins University Press on 2 June 2026. It will be launched a week later in Ottawa (details below).

Professor Rod Phillips’s latest book, Cats: A History, will be published by Johns Hopkins

Cats is a history of the relationships between cats and humans from the time wildcats entered the human orbit in the Middle East about 12,000 years ago, and eventually became cats, to the present day, when there are thought to be as many as a billion feral cats, street cats, and pet cats worldwide. In between, cats have been: appreciated for protecting food supplies from rodents; associated by Christians with heresies, magic, and witches; valued and protected by Muslims; portrayed by men as aloof, deceitful, selfish, and promiscuous, and therefore as analogous to women and women’s sexuality; dispersed from Europe around the world between 1500 and 1900; targeted for ritualized torture and killing, often by burning; thought of by nationalists as outsiders deserving of extermination (one Nazi referred to cats as “the Jews of the animal world”); widely kept as pets from the mid-1900s; and cultural icons and stars of the internet.

Cats now face existential challenges by campaigns to kill all feral cats and to confine and de-sex pet cats.

Cats: A History places the tumultuous narrative of cats-humans relationships in the broad sweep of history. For more details:

You’re invited to the Ottawa launch of Cats:

Perfect Books, 258A Elgin Street, Ottawa

Tuesday, 9 June 2026, from 7:00 to 8:30pm. (Doors open at 6:30pm)

There’s no need to reserve a place.

For more information, contact Rod Phillips at roderick.phillips@carleton.ca

Cats: A History Explores the Surprising History of House Cats

History

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