THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER People kept asking: Why would you have cats that don't
love you back? The morning after Courtney Gustafson moved into an old house in the Poets
Square neighbourhood of Tucson Arizona she noticed tiny pawprints all over her driveway. They
were the first evidence of a colony of feral cats who would in time become part of her family
and help pierce a personal darkness she'd wrestled with for much of her life. Beebs was the
first cat to appear allowing herself to be petted in the driveway. And then came so many
others. There was Monkey the hissing dark-blotched calico and Reverse Monkey her timid
white-blotched opposite. There were Sad Boy and Lola the inseparable pair who made their way
across the internet and into strangers' wedding vows. There was the sweet serene Dr. Big Butt
who brought lessons about grief. And there was Goldie the tiny king of Poets Square: sick
skinny but completely unafraid. These cats - and many many others - would expand her world
spectacularly. Poets Square is a love letter to community in a broken society told through
the cats Courtney meets in dark alleys neglected homes and her own driveway cats she
cherishes and must sometimes let go. Above all she explores what her encounters with feral
cats can teach us about care connectedness and the power of hope. 'Cats are mystical beings
bridging the spiritual and the tangible. Courtney Gustafson's Poet Square is a book that helps
us connect to this spiritual world offering a bridge to the ethereal' Ai Weiwei 'Courtney
Gustafson writes with uncommon grace about the castoff the abandoned the invisible. This book
should be read and treasured for its ability to make the reader more human and humane' Lauren
Slater author of Blue Dreams 'Deftly intertwined with the individual stories of all these
cats is her own story of how she got there ... She is clear-eyed about the deviation of her
life' Esther Walker The Spike
