Crooked Cats - Animal Lives by Nayanika Mathur Hardcover

About the Book

"The last decade has seen the increasing entry of big cats-lions, tigers, and leopards-into human settlements in India. Most big cats co-reside with humans. But some have become "crooked"-killing people, often serially, and frightening residents in villages and cities. This new book, by big cat connoisseur and anthropologist Nayanika Mathur, lays bare the peculiar atmosphere of terror these encounters create, reinforced by stories, conspiracy theories, rumors, anger, and news reports about charismatic "celebrity" cats. There are various theories of why and how a big cat turns to eating people, and Mathur lays out the dominant ideas offered by the residents with whom she works. These vary from the effects of climate change and habitat loss to history and politics. The latter, for example, include the idea of big cats turning on humans for retribution for past injustices (poaching or hunting). Still, no one, including the scientists who study animal behavior, has been able to explain the highly individualized reasons why some cats turn against humans and others do not. Beautifully detailed in its portrayal of India's places, people, and animals, Crooked Cats sheds light on how we understand nonhuman animals and the growing intensity of human-nonhuman conflict in the Anthropocene"--

Book Synopsis

Big cats--tigers, leopards, and lions--that make prey of humans are commonly known as "man-eaters." Anthropologist Nayanika Mathur reconceptualizes them as cats that have gone off the straight path to become "crooked." Building upon fifteen years of research in India, this groundbreaking work moves beyond both colonial and conservationist accounts to place crooked cats at the center of the question of how we are to comprehend a planet in crisis.

There are many theories on why and how a big cat comes to prey on humans, with the ecological collapse emerging as a central explanatory factor. Yet, uncertainty over the precise cause of crookedness persists. Crooked Cats explores in vivid detail the many lived complexities that arise from this absence of certain knowledge to offer startling new insights into both the governance of nonhuman animals and their intimate entanglements with humans. Through creative ethnographic storytelling, Crooked Cats illuminates the Anthropocene in three critical ways: as method, as a way of reframing human-nonhuman relations on the planet, and as a political tool indicating the urgency of academic engagement. Weaving together "beastly tales" spun from encounters with big cats, Mathur deepens our understanding of the causes, consequences, and conceptualization of the climate crisis.

Review Quotes

"Nayanika Mathur's Crooked Cats: Beastly Encounters in the Anthropocene is a hard-hitting argument by a political scientist about the cultural (both human and leopard) and institutional ways in which big cats, particularly leopards, cohabit with humans in India. The book is a fascinating look at the political ecology of human-eating big cats and the responses of humans from the relatively powerless to the more powerful as mediated through governmental bureaucracy."-- "Oryx"

"While Mathur focuses on personal experience of an unusual occurrence, her persuasive arguments, with supporting resources and notes, successfully connect the observed phenomena to issues of interest to many... Highly recommended."-- "Choice"

"At a time when scholarship is highlighting the phenomenon of extinction, Mathur offers an important intervention that redirects attention from this accelerating absence by focusing instead on imaginatively constituted interactions between humans and animals under threat. Introducing many innovative, intriguing, and witty concepts, Crooked Cats is a distinctive contribution to the ongoing and ever-evolving conversation about human-animal conflict and coexistence."-- "Kath Weston, University of Virginia"

"In this captivating book, Mathur offers a sensitive examination of ordinary ethical struggle with cruelties and injustices spawned by human domination of the earth. She writes gripping stories of big cats, mostly from within the villages and towns of Himalayan north India, to bridge the different ways in which the global climate crisis has been imagined, understood, and explained. This is precisely the bridge that must be crossed to reach solutions that are locally meaningful and globally just."-- "K. Sivaramakrishnan, Yale University"

About the Author

Nayanika Mathur is associate professor in anthropology and South Asian studies, as well as a fellow of Wolfson College at the University of Oxford. She is the author of Paper Tiger: Law, Bureaucracy and the Developmental State in Himalayan India.