Poets Square : A Memoir in Thirty Cats by Courtney Gustafson
- Cana Clark
- Jun 10
- 8 min read
This is my most-anticipated book of the year. I’ve followed the Poets Square Cats (@poetssquarecats) social media account on Instagram and Tiktok for a couple years. I fell in love with Sad Boy and Lola, the most famous cats of a 30-cat colony in Tucson, Arizona. Their caretaker, Courtney Gustafson, has been recording the colony of cats outside her home in a neighborhood called Poets Square since 2020. When I saw my favorite cat account post that the creator was releasing a memoir, I was thrilled. I preordered the book from my local indie and brought it with me on a work trip.
I wish I could read it for the first time again — maybe with a book group or at least a buddy. This book made me think. It had me scrambling to text friends about what I'd read. I actually bought tabs to keep track of all the moments I wanted to come back to read again.
The book starts so strongly that I had to tab the first paragraph. The last line of that paragraph serves as a frame for the entire book, and also warned me what exactly I was getting into:
“Feral, for all the wildness it implies, just means that an animal was abandoned by the system that created it.”
God. What a line. So much of the book was filled with these tab-worthy lines. In fact, I want to walk through this review by focusing on the lines that left me with the most to think about.
In the first essay, the titular “Poets Square,” Gustafson explores how she came about having 30 feral cats. The home she rents in Tucson with her boyfriend, Tim, has a little carport where she quickly learns that cats congregate. They end up in the bushes, in the neighbor’s yards, on the roof, and in the streets. She’s eager to befriend them, but also filled with that horrible dread that people feel when they see a stray animal. It’s the dread of responsibility, and a dread for the guilt you anticipate when you consider looking the other way. Gustafson slowly becomes consumed by this dreadful curiosity, and she writes this line that left me with a pit in my stomach, even from the safe distance of a reader looking at printed word:
“Tim had grown up in a trailer on a rural tract of land, in 4-H club, handling animals in all their realities. The husbandry. The gross parts. He understood before I did what would happen with the cats at our house: how they would reproduce, how they would die, how powerless we would be to do much about it. Are they eating birds? I would ask him. Are there mice here? I didn't understand how they were surviving. I didn’t understand that they weren’t.”
Isn’t that just the worst thing you’ve ever read? I tabbed this paragraph, closed the book, and walked away.
The next line that haunts me was in the same essay. This is where Gustafson begins counting and tracking the cats, supplying a bit of food and water, despite the financial strain. She tries to comfort and reassure herself that her "paltry offerings" will be enough.
“I cried a lot. I know I can’t save them all, I told Tim, I just don’t want to see them suffer. That had felt like a noble thing to say. It would be a year before I would start to think about the difference between I don’t want to see them suffer and I don’t want to SEE them suffer, how easily I had felt like a good person before suffering was right outside my door. Before I was forced to face it.”
Jeez. What a horrid thing to say out loud. These pointed revelations really stop you as you read because it's such a specific, niche experience and yet it feels so personal. It's a mirror you don't really want to look in. It's damn good writing.
Eventually, of course, Gustafson learns how to care for the cats and begins heavily investing in their wellbeing. She records them and names them and posts them, which is how we get one of my favorite cat influencer accounts. (How silly that description sounds now that I've read her journey).
One of the best things about Poets Square is how incredibly self-aware Gustafson is. Her writing is aware of her status as an influencer and her presentation as a “good person” posting on the internet about being a good person. In “My Tiny Tender Heart,” she worries that posting about going to such lengths to rescue cats is bragging:
“Did I need strangers on the internet to tell me that crawling under a truck each day made me good?
It would be years before I really considered what my motivations had been and tried it on to see if it felt true: I started an Instagram account for the cats because I wanted people to think I’m good.”
Reading this made me really trust Gustafson — if she’s willing to admit this to herself, write it, and publish it — then I can trust her writing to be honest.
In her honesty, we face the elephant in the room: the author of this book is a Tiktoker. An influencer. A content creator, if you’re feeling generous. Gustafson acknowledges all of this and reflects on the absurdity of it in “Viral Cat Videos and the American Dream.”
In this essay, we learn how much the virality changes Gustafson’s life, and the lives of all the cats under her care. The money that her success brings in provides security for all of them. The ridiculousness of it all isn’t lost on her.
“It was easy to ignore the effects of money when I thought of them as animals. They didn’t have jobs or bank accounts or generational wealth; they couldn’t understand that all the new beds I bought came from selling their own faces on T-shirts. It was easier to think about when I remembered that I was an animal, too, living under systems that often felt rigged against me.”
It is outrageous that Gustafson struggled for money while working a full-time job as a marketer at a food bank, and yet a social media app is what finally provides her with security. She's embarrassed to admit it, but Tiktok is what gives her the time and money to feel comfortable. Being an influencer gives her the resources to start caring for cats outside of her own.
As her world expands from her own little colony, she begins Trap, Neuter, Release (TNR) work. TNR is a program utilized in many countries to help control stray cat populations without overfilling shelters - it involves humanely trapping, neutering/spaying, and then releasing stray cats back to where they were trapped. Gustafson’s TNR work takes her to all sorts of places and allows her to meet all sorts of people. Some people are eager for her assistance, while others resent her. Plenty of people are already trying to help the strays, but not all of them are successful.
“My work lies somewhere in the dissonance between what animals need from us and what we want to give them, the tension between wanting to help cats and wanting to feel like we’re helping cats.”
She shares that the first rescuer she ever met told her she wasn’t doing enough. Clearly this left a mark - Gustafson has an incredible empathy for other helpers, even when those people aren’t really and truly helping. People leave out food for the cats that has gone rancid or that they can’t digest. Sometimes they refuse to let anyone spay and neuter the cats. While it can be frustrating, Gustafson never blames these people.
“I’m fascinated by people’s interpretation of care, their motivations, the lengths they go to. The things they try. Sometimes it’s desperation, the best effort they can afford. The leftovers, the pizza crusts, the attempts at vet care without going to a vet. Sometimes it’s not knowing better. The gulf between the care we want to give and the care we have access to.”
I see the connection in this floundering, desperate attempt at care for cats and the ways that care for humans often fails. Like Gustafson, I’ve spent time working at a food bank. My experience as an occasional volunteer often leaves me furious and guilty. Why don’t we have that specific allergen-friendly food for the client whose child needs it? What do you mean we can’t give a family more than one loaf of bread? The donations average people bring in are often useless or a waste of time compared to what the Trader Joe’s and Walmart donate from their clearance. How infuriating that a man with dirt on his work boots and a woman in scrubs cannot afford to shop at the stores who only feed other human beings for a tax break.
In “Hunger,” Gustafson makes this brutal connection between Monkey, a cat in her colony who constantly bites and steals food from other cats, and the people at the food bank who appear ungrateful or angry. When Monkey finally gets used to steady food and care, she changes. She becomes relaxed and friendly. Gustafson’s therapist helps her see how it’s all connected:
“Do you think that if you had the security of knowing you would always be fed, and you would always have shelter, and you didn’t have to worry about these basic parts of survival...?
I finished for her: I would be different.”
How different we all would be if we didn’t have the threat of hunger over us. Maybe that mother I judged for letting her too-young-for-screens kids play on the phone at the food pantry would be able to be more present. Perhaps the difficult grandmother who always tries to grab more fruit than is allowed would be more considerate of others.
Whenever I get frustrated about someone trying to take extra food, I remember that they are at a food pantry, and I have no idea how many people they are trying to feed and how it must feel to not know where your next meal is coming from. I try to imagine who that “difficult” client could be if they didn’t have to get food from the food pantry. I try to imagine who we all might be if the systems that leave animals to die on the streets didn’t treat human beings and stray cats the same.
These essays are going to live with me for a long time, and I'll revisit the tabbed lines of my copy for years to come. Poets Square is a must-read for anyone in animal rescue or social work, or who has ever felt guilt and anger when a stray cat or human is left unfed.
You can follow Courtney Gustafson and her wonderful cats at @poetssquarecats on Instagram and Tiktok.
Book Info
Title: Poets Square : A Memoir in Thirty Cats
Publisher: Crown/Penguin Random House
ISBN: 9780593727614
Author: Courtney Gustafson
Illustrator: N/A
Pub date: April 29, 2025
“[A] tender debut . . . One need not be a cat person to be enchanted by this.”—Publishers Weekly
“As she contemplates her life and internet virality, Gustafson grapples with perception by the online masses, the significant and empowering love of an animal, misogyny in rescue work, the financial strain of pet ownership, the ache of animal loss, and most importantly, how to develop a community. Her riveting and emotional vignettes are loaded with humanity and all the important lessons we can learn from little creatures just trying to survive.”—Booklist, starred review
“[A] poignant, beautifully written debut memoir, Poets Square: A Memoir in Thirty Cats, [is] a book that will change the way readers think about feline and human nature alike. . . . What makes Poets Square stand out among other animal welfare stories is Gustafson’s insistence that the suffering of domestic animals often mirrors the suffering of the people who care for them. . . . A necessary read for those who work and volunteer in animal welfare, Poets Square is also a loving tribute to the way animals can provide ‘bright thriving spots of hope in the world.’”—BookPage
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