Will My Cat Eay My Eyeballs?: Big Questions from Tiny Mortals about Death
Caitlin Doughty, 2019
W.W. Norton & Co.
240 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780393652703
Summary
Best-selling author and mortician Caitlin Doughty answers real questions from kids about death, dead bodies, and decomposition.
Every day, funeral director Caitlin Doughty receives dozens of questions about death. The best questions come from kids.
What would happen to an astronaut’s body if it were pushed out of a space shuttle? Do people poop when they die? Can Grandma have a Viking funeral?
In Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?, Doughty blends her mortician’s knowledge of the body and the intriguing history behind common misconceptions about corpses to offer factual, hilarious, and candid answers to thirty-five distinctive questions posed by her youngest fans.
In her inimitable voice, Doughty details lore and science of what happens to, and inside, our bodies after we die. Why do corpses groan? What causes bodies to turn colors during decomposition? And why do hair and nails appear longer after death?
Readers will learn the best soil for mummifying your body, whether you can preserve your best friend’s skull as a keepsake, and what happens when you die on a plane.
Beautifully illustrated by Dianne Ruz, Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? shows us that death is science and art, and only by asking questions can we begin to embrace it. 36 illustrations (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—August 19, 1984
• Raised—Oahu, Hawaii, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Chicago; B.S., Cypress College
• Currently—lives in Los Angeles, California
Caitlin Doughty is a mortician and the of Smoke Gets in Your Eyes (2014), From Here to Eternity (2017), and Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? (2019). She is the creator of the web series "Ask a Mortician." She lives in Los Angeles, California, where she owns and runs a funeral home. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? is funny, dark, and at times stunningly existential, revealing not only how little we understand about death, but also how much kids can handle.
Marianne Eloise - Guardian (UK)
There’s serious science here, but also cultural lessons in death and dying, a little history, and a touch of gruesomeness wrapped in that shroud of sharp, witty humor.
Terri Schlichenmeyer - Philadelphia Tribune
[E]very one of Doughty’s answers serves as a charming guide into something we take enormous pains to avoid.
B. David Zarley - Paste Magazine
With every ounce of straight-talking spunk one could muster for this topic, Doughty delivers a surprisingly heart-warming read.
Christy Lynch - BookPage
[Doughty] provides answers to questions both humorous and moving, bringing tiny and full-sized mortals alike to a greater comfort with and understanding of the one transition that will happen to us all.
Anna Spydell - BookPage
[A] delightful mixture of science and humor.
Library Journal
Doughty's writing is unusually conversational in tone for a book with subjects that can be considered taboo. Not only does she manage to make it extremely informative, throughout she includes her comments with sometimes profound thoughts, real humor and a significant dose of brilliant wit.
Pamela Kramer - BookReporter
Doughty's answers are as delightful and distinctive as the questions. She blends humor with respect for the dead…. Her investigations of ritual, custom, law and science are thorough, and she doesn't shy from naming the parts of Grandma's body that might leak after she is gone.
Julia Kastner - Shelf Awareness
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for WILL MY CAT EAT MY EYEBALLS?… then take off on your own:
1. Of the 35 questions asked in this book, which do you find most intriguing? Which are the funniest? What questions would you want to ask Caitlin Doughty?
2. What have you learned after reading Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?
3. Doughty compares the silence surrounding issues of death to the ways we deal with conversations around sex. Do you agree?
4. (Follow-up to Question 3) Adults tend to shut down children's questions about death. Is that wise? What about instituting "death education" classes in school or in church for children? At what age should young people learn about dying and death?
5. Doughty's mission, in her books, including this one, and on her YouTube series, "Ask a Mortician," is to dispel our fear of death, adults' as well as children's. Does this book help in achieving that goal? After reading Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?, do you have a different attitude toward, or understanding of, death and dying?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)