Giving a book to someone who loves cats can seem simple. In reality, it’s a trap. Search vaguely for “cat book gift” and you’ll quickly land on three main categories: coffee table books full of photos of sleeping kittens, practical guides to decoding your companion’s meows, and collections of lukewarm quotes about feline wisdom. In other words: plenty of options, but not much actually worth giving to an adult still in possession of their faculties.
The right book for a cat lover isn’t necessarily the one that teaches them to spot an ear infection, or the one reminding them that “cats choose us.” The right book is the one that understands just how deeply absurd, humiliating and fascinating life with a cat really is.
A Good Cat Book Should Start by Admitting They’re Weird
Cats aren’t just cute. They’re touchy, moody, manipulative, unpredictable, sometimes downright unhinged. They wake you at dawn, refuse fresh water to drink out of a vase instead, demand food then act insulted by the taste, and can watch you cry without showing the slightest bit of solidarity.
A book that talks well about cats should start from there. No “unique bond between human and animal,” no mystical prose about feline grace. Just an honest observation: living with a cat means accepting that a small lounge room predator runs your schedule, your couch and a chunk of your mental health.
The Best Gift Is Often a Funny Book
Why? Because a cat lover already knows an enormous amount about cats. They know exactly what time their cat demands kibble, which side of the couch they prefer, which pate gives them diarrhoea, and how to tell a hungry meow from a contemptuous one. What they don’t necessarily have, though, is a book that turns this deeply lopsided relationship into comic material.
That’s where a book like What to Do If My Cat Is Gay? becomes a great answer to “what book should I give someone who loves cats?” Not because it explains what to do about vomit on the carpet, it doesn’t, but because it understands one fundamental truth: when you live with a cat, you always end up inventing a wildly delusional personality for them.
Why This Book Works So Well as a Gift
Because it takes that absurd reflex, projecting opinions, neuroses and human behaviours onto your cat, and pushes it to breaking point. The book imagines the 100 worst possible things your cat could become: woke, racist, promiscuous, a conspiracy theorist, a hipster, anti-work, and so on, with each chapter offering worrying signs, solutions and an increasingly catastrophic conclusion.
It’s exactly the kind of gift that works when:
- the person loves cats and absurdist humour;
- they’ve already said “I swear he’s making me pay for something” about their cat;
- or they need a book they can dip into, open at random and read aloud at drinks to humiliate their loved ones.
What to Avoid If You’re Looking for a Book to Give
Very earnest practical guides, unless the person genuinely just adopted a cat and asked for your help. Overly polished coffee table books, unless they collect decorative objects. “Feel good” books about the wisdom of cats, unless you actively want them to hate you.
If the person loves their cat enough to talk about them like a child, an ex or a toxic flatmate, chances are they’d rather laugh at themselves than read yet another book about the soothing virtues of purring.
Conclusion
So, what book should you give someone who loves cats? If you want to be honest: a book that understands this passion isn’t remotely reasonable anymore, and that’s exactly what makes it funny.
What to Do If My Cat Is Gay? works brilliantly in that role, because it doesn’t talk about cats as wise, mysterious or spiritual creatures. It talks about them the way their owners actually experience them: toxic flatmates, soft tyrants, agents of chaos deeply convinced they own the place.
And honestly, that’s already a lot closer to the truth.
