Book Description Review “In this delightful blend of scientific writing and good old-fashioned muckraking, award-winning journalist Pittman pens the absorbing tale of how the Florida panther was brought back from near-extinction. … The ups-and-downs in this tale of survival, coupled with the charisma of the panther, make Pittman’s ‘cat tale’ hard to put down.”—Booklist (starred review)“A bright, intriguing story of people and panthers with strong appeal for readers interested in endangered species.” –Kirkus Reviews“With a mixture of science, politics, personalities and the Endangered Species Act, Craig Pittman weaves an intriguing story, following the efforts to recover the Florida Panther from extinction. This captivating book builds a story around the science and touched on my own experiences with defending cougars and wolves. It drew me in with its humor, frustrated me with all the bureaucracy and forcefully presented a path for those who care to join and fight back before it’s too late.” —Jim Dutcher, coauthor of The Wisdom of Wolves“Craig Pittman has a remarkable talent for telling stories set in the Sunshine State that never fail to fascinate and entertain. Sure, Cat Tale has plenty of laughs and Florida weirdness, but Pittman has written a truly inspirational story about the panther’s brush with extinction, and the human beings who were determined to save the species. You won’t be able to put Cat Tale down.” —Gilbert King, author of the Pulitzer prize-winning, Devil in the Grove“A fun, informative, and engaging read, Cat Fight is the definitive book on one of America’s least understood apex predators. The story of how Florida’s panthers were saved from extinction is one that both deserves and needs to be told.” —Dane Huckelbridge, author of No Beast So Fierce“Expertly navigating the wild lands and political jungle of Florida, the preeminent environmental journalist Craig Pittman reaches out and grabs his reader like a panther. And you grab back. The story—sobering and stirring, mottled with irony and bits of humor—is too good to let go.” —Jack E. Davis, author of The Gulf“[A] Remarkable work of longform reporting.” –The Revelator“Cat Tale is a prime study of excellence in environmental reporting and the ability to tell a compelling story to a wide audience.” –SE Journal “A standout in the field of environmental writing…Cat Tale shows us Pittman at his best: passionate, earnest and sincere about our state, balancing his love for Florida with his need to tell us the truth about our failures.” –Creative Loafing “As in all good books, Cat Tale contains drama and an assortment of heroes and villains.” –Sarasota Magazine“Any fan of big cats will find in his pages an education, and a pleasure.” –Tampa Bay Times“With clarity, insight, and heartfelt concern, Pittman effectively sheds light on conservation efforts in Florida for its official state animal.”—Publishers Weekly“[A] fascinating, page-turning account…[this] ultimately hopeful, exploration of how the Florida panther recovered against the odds will appeal to those who enjoy reading about wildlife and endangered species.” –Library Journal“In this era of bleak environmental news, Craig Pittman’s Cat Tale comes as a witty and passionate reminder that nature is robust–it wants to live!–and that we humans, with concerted effort, a wariness of cynicism and profiteering, and a certain ability to roll with frustration, can do a great deal to reverse the course we’re on.” —Lauren Groff, author of Florida“Environmental storylines that don’t end in gloom are their own kind of endangered species these days, which is just one of the pleasantly oddball aspects of Cat Tale. … It’s a punchy, riveting story.” —Garden & Gun Read more About the Author Craig Pittman is an award-winning journalist at the Tampa Bay Times and author of 4 books, including NYT bestseller Oh, Florida! How America’s Weirdest State Influences the Rest of the Country. His journalism has won 4 Waldo Proffitt Awards for Distinguished Environmental Journalism in Florida. Twice he won the Society of Environmental Journalists’ top investigative reporting award. He was named a Florida Literary Legend by Florida Heritage Book Festival in 2020. Read more Customers Review: This is a well-researched and very readable review of attempts to save a vanishing breed of big cat in the hinterlands of Florida. The author presents an eclectic cast of characters ranging from scientists, farmers and hunters to consultants, conmen and politicians. There was no consensus on how many panthers were out there or where they were roaming so the story takes us deep into the swamps, literally – tramping through places like Big Cypress and the Everglades looking for the big cats, and also figuratively – caught up in bureaucratic and political infighting and backroom deals. While all of this is going on, panthers are disappearing and their habitat is giving way to new golf courses, housing developments, shopping malls and highways. This is a cautionary tale about human impacts on the natural world around us and the complications involved in trying to manage the environment. Highly recommended.
An excellent book for understanding the plight of the Florida Panthers and the steps that have been taken in an attempt to save it from extinction.The author does an incredible job of relaying the efforts of those who were working to save the Panthers, those who were working towards a path of development and the inevitable extinction of the Panthers and those who were ostensibly fighting for the Panthers but we’re really being paid by developers to help destroy their essential habitat. It is a riveting read where the survival of a species is at stake. I thank the author for bringing to light to issue and I hope that it will inspire other to work towards saving the Florida Panther from extinction.
What an informative and well researched read this was. Growing up in South Florida I was very aware of the over development of the wetlands and just South Florida in general but not so much in the Florida panther. This story reads well, though I had to take notes to keep up with the cast of characters. Recommend for anyone especially Florida natives growing up in Florida, especially say during the 50s and later.
Pittman expertly weaves the page-turning tale of a “Hail Mary” experiment to save a vanishing species, mixing easy-to-digest science with colorful anecdotes. My favorite? The tough lion tracker who rode a blind-folded mule into the West Texas mountains to catch the female cougars that ultimately saved the Florida panther.
the history
I received a free electronic ARC of this excellent history of the Florida Panther from Netgalley, Craig Pittman, and Hanover Square Press. Thank you all for sharing your hard work with me. I have read this work of my own volition, and this review reflects my honest opinion of this work. I am pleased to recommend Craig Pittman to friends and family. He shares with us the sad and interesting record of the ups and downs – mostly downs – of the existence of the Florida panther. Again their numbers are expected to be small but there are still some out there – at least for the next little bit. Looking at Washington policies of today, we haven’t learned much over all these years… The ones who will bear the brunt of this short-sighted attitude will be the usual – Sandhill Cranes, Florida puma, the Manatee.
Triggers: Animal death, animal extinction, cruelty to animals.I lived the 1990’s in Florida, in a suburb in the central part of the state. Before, and after, the 90s, I traveled their often because family lived there. In all the time I have spent in Florida, I have never seen a Florida panther. You barely even heard anything about them. Occasionally you’d see a postcard with one of them on there. And I love/ hate the Florida Panthers NHL team in the late 90s and 2000s.Even though you’d see an occasional postcard, a whisper here and there from the news or some sort of homage to the panthers elsewhere, you never felt any connection with them. Felt more like an urban legend. Or maybe like Bigfoot. (Well, it’s Florida though, so I guess it would probably be Bigfoot’s southern cousin, the Skunk Ape.) Maybe it’s real? *shrug* We don’t know. That’s how it felt with the panthers in Florida. At least for Joe and Jane Average living in the same state with the big cats. Hell, I heard more about all the pythons living in the everglades then any ol’ panther!That is the biggest thing I loved about Craig Pittman’s book, Cat Tale. It told the real story of what was going on with the panthers in Florida. The story never told in the newspapers, or on tv, or on any of those stupid postcards that seemed so distant, so remote. It just… floored me that all of this was going on in the same state I lived in, and we never even knew anything about it!Cat Tale is extremely well researched. And I mean… extremely well researched. The author starts with a semi brief history of the very first reports of panthers in Florida waaaay back in the day when (white) people first began to settle in the area. So we get a few reports and reactions of the handful of people living there. Surprise, then fear. Then anger. How dare these cats live on OUR land! Rarely any big cat attacks on people. EVER. But we stupid humans have to have a knee jerk-reaction and quickly grab for the guns and start shooting. How American of us. -.- But I digress…People think “fake news” is a new thing, but it’s not. Way back in the day, it was even worse then now days. Lots of fabricated information. Some of the news reports about panthers back in the settler’s time period may or may not have always been on the up and up. Some reporters just stretched the truth to make an article more flashy. Some reporters just straight up wrote a fictional article and sold it as fact. While some reporters actually tried to do a legit report but details / clues / evidence were just lacking, so a lot of assumptions were made.After the brief chapter or two about the early days of Florida settlers finding a panther on their porch, we start moving into a time where a lot of information starts to become more consistently documented. Florida panther sightings and events, from the start of the 20th century to present day. I can’t even imagine how long it took for the author to dig through decades of paper files, microfiche, VHS and cassette tapes, interviews, political documents, diaries / journals, letters, emails, etc, etc, etc…. in order to give us such an accurate account of saving the Florida Panthers. Dude! I get tired just LISTING all the ways of digging for the facts!! The author is clearly passionate and dedicated to the cause. I am incredibly impressed at Pittman did with this novel.A few more chapters in, and Pittman starts getting to the real meat of the story. When Floridians first started noticing that, hey… where’d the panther go? And are there any left? Quickly followed with “Hey, I don’t know… should we, like… do something about this?” From the very first attempts to find and document the panthers, to the start of trying to save them, leading all the way up to today’s work. We learn about all the key players, as well as the bit players. The trackers, the biologists, the vets, the politicians… everyone.Along with all the old documents to work from, the author actually tracks down a lot of the people from those documents and gets interviews from them first hand. He asks the questions nobody else did, then or now! I loved how Pittman skillfully weaves the old documents with modern interviews from people involved, so they can add more information and depth to what the author relates to us from all the old documents. Information not always spoken or written about in those research or legal documents.Another skill the author has, is making this huge, scientific, multi-decade long info dump extremely entertaining. You know how it is… not complaining, buuutttt… some non-fiction science books get a little…. long winded and boring… with how they are told. You know what I mean? Not that the information is bad or anything, it’s just that it is told in more of a professor / textbook monotone sort of way. Very stiff. Not much emotion, just stating the facts as they are. Those sort of books can be great for learning about the subject, but sometimes they also kind of… make your eyes start to glaze over, right?Not so with Cat Tale! The author took the subject extremely serious, but he also lightened a pretty dark story with some well placed humor. He also injected the story with a lot of energy and passion. He clearly loves the state he lives in, but he also totally gets that Florida is RIDICULOUS. Ok, I’ve spent a lot of time there. So I get it. Florida is crazy. You get to experience some of the crazy in Cat Tale and Pittman just kind of rolls with it. Not always agreeing with it, but at the same time, he shrugs his shoulders, shakes his head, gives a slight chuckle, and goes, well… that’s Florida for you.Now… WARNING. This is a pretty SAD story. Yes, we do have a happy ending of helping the panther… but man, it is pretty bleak for most of the book. Especially if you are a huge animal and wildlife lover. It’s also very frustrating for anyone who loves untamed or untainted land for nature, or those who love trying to save the planet we live on instead of messing it up farther. I am a big sucker for animals and saving the wildlife, so there were some parts where I was pretty much crying at just the savagery and uncaring killing people did / do to the panthers for no other reason then they could. Or the greedy, dirty BS of the politicians, who could care less about the state animal unless it looked good for re-election. Not to mention a fair amount of sexism, inner pettiness and massive ego problems going on on the actual team that is trying to save the panthers. AGH! A LOT of stupidity! Enough to make you want to rip out your hair at times. At the same time though, you can’t help but be lured in by this incredible story.This isn’t a terribly long book, but there is a ton of information packed in it. The pacing moves really fast and you never feel bored by what you are reading. I also never felt overwhelmed by too much info thrown at me. I will admit it did take me a longer time to read then most books because there is a lot of information to thoughtfully disgust instead of just speeding through it. There are a LOT of names to remember though, and sometimes it was a little bit hard to keep it straight on who everyone was.So, to sum it all up… Cat Tale is an amazing book. Extremely entertaining and very well researched. That story is a sad, happy, and strange, with decent amounts of humor to help keep things a little lighter. The author really did a phenomenal job. I would recommend this to anyone who is interested in biology, wildlife, nature, and or cats. Hey, if you like non-fiction… you need to read this book. Everyone. Read this book. Brings attention to a forgotten big cat of the US. It is about time.
Terrific! This is both a saga of the effort to save the Florida panther and an expose of the greed and craziness that surrounds it. Oh, and it’s a hoot. Florida is home to many many things- wild life, wild weather, wild people- and all it them converge here. You’ll learn something, you’ll shake your head in dismay, and you will chuckle. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. For those concerned with environmental issues and for fans of Carl Hiaasen and Randy Wayne White. I worry this won’t get the readership it deserves. |
14 reviews