Editor's note: Two leading authorities on cat care, award-winning writer Wendy Christensen and The HSUS, have combined their research and experiences to create The Humane Society of the United States Complete Guide to Cat Care. The 322-page book, which hits bookstores on Tuesday, June 18, covers topics ranging from nutrition to emergency care to understanding feline behavior. In this extended Q&A, The HSUS's companion animals specialist Nancy Peterson, a contributor to the Cat Care book, talks to lead author Christensen about our ever-evolving understanding of cats, those seemingly mysterious creatures who have not shared our homes as long as dogs have and whose subtle behaviors we continue to decode.

Nancy Peterson: Wendy, although we've never met face-to-face, I feel like we know each other, because we have worked with each other pretty regularly on this Complete Guide to Cat Care. I know that cats are as dear to your heart as they are to mine, but I'm wondering, how did you get involved in writing about animals in general?

Wendy Christensen: It was completely by accident. I never set out to be a writer. Actually, I was an illustrator. Well, actually, I started out my career as a software engineer for many, many years. I always wanted to be an artist or an illustrator, and eventually I kind of semi-retired from the software business and tried to make a go of it illustrating. The writing came about by accident. I answered an ad for a regional paper that wanted a book reviewer and that's how I started writing. I had never really considered being a writer.

NP: And now a book...

WC: And now a book, yes. I've found that I really, really enjoy writing.

NP: Certainly with 73 million cats out there in people's homes, we know they are very popular. If you go to the bookstores and the libraries, you will see lots of books about cats. I'm sure that some of the people are asking themselves, why another cat book?

WC: That's an excellent question because so many cat books are published every year. There's always a lot of new research coming out about cats and not just about their health and their care, especially in the last few years as cats have become the most popular house pet in America. So much research is being done into their health and into their special nature that wasn't done before, so there's a lot of new information that's come out that needs to be presented. This book kind of puts it all together in a very practical way. There's a lot of very practical ways to live with your cat every day in a safe and protective and enriched way in your house that really other books don't present, because they just aren't as up-to-date.

NP: As you know, it was very important that The HSUS philosophy of humane stewardship be ever present in the book, and that is why you won't find information about breeding.

WC: Yes, and that's a very important point. In fact, people who have looked at the book, they haven't actually missed the fact that there isn't information about breeding until it's pointed out to them, because we pretty much stuck to the average cat owner, the average cat, and the average problems you're going to run into. The responsible breeders who specialize have an entire literature to cover that sort of thing. It's very specialized and very detailed, and that needs to be there for those people. But the average cat owner really doesn't need that, so I spent the extra space on things like enriching your indoor environment, understanding your cat's behavior, on practical things like how best to take care of your litter box and clean up messes, which is something that a lot of cat books don't get into very much.

NP: What do you think most cat owners might find surprising about the book?

WC: I think the thing I really tried to emphasize throughout was looking at the world through your cat's eyes and trying to understand why he does what he does. Because people still believe a lot of these old things, like when your cat scratches the furniture he's mad at you, and he's getting revenge. Meanwhile, they haven't provided an alternative, the scratching post or whatever. I've explained to a lot of people that your cat needs to scratch, and you explain why and they say, "Oh, I didn't know that!" Then they go and get a scratching post, and everything is fine. That's something that really runs through the whole book: You learn how your cat sees the world, because I'm going to give you a whole new insight into why he does what he does.

NP: Fortunately, he's not thinking the way a human might, that he's going to maybe pee on your pillow out of spite or revenge.

WC: I mean, he might do something like that, but it's for a totally different reason. It's for a cat's sensible reason, and your job is, as the cat's owner, to find out if he's trying to communicate. Because most things that people think of as misbehavior or naughtiness or revenge—which are all old myths—the cat's basically trying to communicate to you something that's important to him.

NP: One of the big topics that we discussed in the book was the indoor/outdoor debate...

WC: And that's a major problem.

NP: Right, and what do you see as some of the misconceptions people have about whether or not a cat can be happy living almost exclusively indoors?

WC: Well, first of all, the whole notion of the cat living happily exclusively indoors is a relatively recent concept. In the past, cats were thought of as semi-wild animals, and even people who kept cats thought that they had to be outside to be happy and to be fulfilled. You still hear that from owners, and if you start digging deeper and deeper, which I have done on many occasions, it really comes down to the litter box. People are really nervous about litter boxes. Maybe they had a cat as a kid, and, of course, the cat went outdoors. So they didn't have to deal with it, and just the very thought of having a litter box is a very frightening thing to them for some reason. So I go into great and gory detail about the setting up of litter boxes, how to do the maintenance.

NP: A lot of people have more than one cat, and having more than one cat may increase the chances you're not using proper litter-box etiquette.

WC: I've talked to so many people who have maybe two or three cats, and they have one box and, of course, they have problems. As soon as you tell them, "No! You need one box per cat, plus maybe a spare," the problems vanish. It's a revelation to people.

NP: I've also found that people who want to allow their cats outdoors often feel plagued by their sense that they would be depriving their cats of something—you know, their "great outdoors."

WC: Yeah, and that actually comes from that old myth that cats are semi-wild, and they really need to be out there. That's something that is gradually sinking into people: More people are keeping their cats indoors and realizing that they have to provide an enriched environment for their cats.

NP: Right, that "enriched environment" is so important!

WC: It's not difficult to do. There are some very simple things you can do that will make your cats very happy. One of which is just regular play time, which is fun for everybody. We do it a couple of times a day around here.

NP: Almost anything that a cat can do outside, I can recreate for my cats in the safety of my home. If they want to lay in the sun, well, they have a little porch by the window. If they want to climb up a tree, they have a cat tree. If they want to chase a leaf, they have a ping-pong ball. The other thing is that knowing where my cat is and that he's basically safe, and then having the opportunity to observe him so closely...

WC: It makes a huge difference both in the relationship you have with your cat and also in heading off problems. This is another place where the litter box comes in real handy, because most signs of illness are going to show up in the litter box way before you'll notice them in the cat's behavior. If you're not seeing the input and the output every day, you're missing some very important clues to your cat's health. People haven't really thought about it in those terms; they think this litter box is just this messy, horrible thing that they have to take care of. I think of it as a letter box; it's full of clues.

NP: You know I live in the city, but even if I lived in the country, I wouldn't dream of letting my kitties out. You live in New Hampshire. How do you see different attitudes toward kitties because you live in such a rural area?

WC: Probably the biggest problem I've noticed around here is we have a lot of people who move up here from, let's say the Boston suburbs, and they had a cat that maybe they were afraid to let out because of the traffic. Maybe they lived near a heavily traveled road or something. They come up here, and they think, "Oh, this is the woods!" They're living on a dirt road, there's not a lot of traffic, and they think it's perfectly safe to leave their cats out. Well, they don't realize that the woods have inhabitants, like coyotes. And there are bobcats here, and bobcats will not hesitate to kill a housecat if they can get them. There's quite a lot of dangers up here, and one of the reasons I started writing a pet column for our regional newspaper was to try to get some of this information out to people in this region and tell them about regionally specific threats to their cats.

NP: They see the light!

WC: There's always a few people who don't see the light, and there are cats that I see wandering through my yard, although not a lot because up here, in general, if a cat wonders outside, he's not going to have a long life. But once you explain the dangers, most people will start to see the light. A few still need an extra nudge somehow. I haven't figured out how to give them that.

NP: What do you think were the biggest challenges that faced you in writing this book?

WC: The major challenge was deciding what to leave out. There was so much more I wanted to say. We had to quit at some point, and it was painful. Some of the things that had to be left out was painful, because there's so much more to be said on understanding cats.

NP: I can understand that.

WC: But in general, it was a labor of love for me. I wrote basically sitting here at my computer with two cats on my desk and a cat on my lap, and brushing tails off the keyboard in between sentences.

NP: If your readers could come away with only one message from this book, what would you like it to be?

WC: I think there are two—one in the practical sense, and one in a more relationship sense. The practical thing is treat your cat to a safe and enriched indoor lifestyle. That is the single best thing you can do for your cat and for yourself and for your relationship with your cat. It has so many benefits that I can't begin to enumerate them. So that would be absolutely number one. And on the relationship side, every day take some time to listen to your cat, really communicate with your cat. Get down on the floor if that's what it takes, but really take some time to listen to what your cat is saying to you. Your cat can teach you a lot, but you really do have to open up your ears and open up your eyes and learn to communicate. Go half way and your cat will come the other half way. Try to cross that bridge with the species if you can, because there's so, so much to be gained from that.

NP: What is something you've learned from your cats?

WC: Oh, just everything! They have been such a huge part of my life, and they are every day. You learn patience, you learn to listen, and you learn to appreciate every moment. Cats live in the present. A cat doesn't fret about what happened last week or worry about what's going to happen next week. They appreciate each moment that comes along, and the ray of sunshine is just a joyous event for them. They flock to it and roll in the sunshine. They live so presently and that's such a wonderful lesson to learn because, you know, we all have so many things going on and we're worried about this and worried about that. They have good memories, they remember things, they learn things, they're incredibly intelligent, but they don't fret about the past and the future.

NP: I read a very cute little quote about cats that said, "The more catnaps you take, the more awakenings you have."

WC: Absolutely, I'm a big fan of catnaps. We do a lot of capnapping around here.

NP: Especially with all your kitties all curled up.

WC: You are absolutely correct about that.