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The Cats of Poets Square
  • Published: 16 April 2026
  • ISBN: 9781405988247
  • Imprint: Penguin Audio
  • Format: Audio Download
  • RRP: $28.00

The Cats of Poets Square

A Memoir in Thirty Feral Cats

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A beautifully written memoir-in-essays about accidentally rescuing a colony of feral cats, and what cats can teach us about creating community and giving care.

Previously published as Poets Square: A Memoir in Thirty Cats

People kept asking: Why would you have cats that don’t love you back?

The morning after Courtney Gustafson moved into an old house in the Poets Square neighbourhood of Tucson, Arizona, she noticed tiny pawprints all over her driveway. They were the first evidence of a colony of feral cats who would, in time, become part of her family and help pierce a personal darkness she’d wrestled with for much of her life.

Beebs was the first cat to appear, allowing herself to be petted in the driveway. And then came so many others. There was Monkey, the hissing, dark-blotched calico, and Reverse Monkey, her timid, white-blotched opposite. There were Sad Boy and Lola, the inseparable pair who made their way across the internet and into strangers’ wedding vows. There was the sweet, serene Dr. Big Butt, who brought lessons about grief. And there was Goldie, the tiny king of Poets Square: sick, skinny, but completely unafraid. These cats – and many, many others – would expand her world spectacularly.

Poets Square is a love letter to community in a broken society, told through the cats Courtney meets in dark alleys, neglected homes and her own driveway; cats she cherishes and must sometimes let go. Above all, she explores what her encounters with feral cats can teach us about care, connectedness and the power
of hope.
  • Published: 16 April 2026
  • ISBN: 9781405988247
  • Imprint: Penguin Audio
  • Format: Audio Download
  • RRP: $28.00

About the author

Courtney Gustafson

Courtney Gustafson is the creator of @PoetsSquareCats on TikTok (1m) and Instagram (269k). Before she had thirty cats, she completed a masters degree and PhD coursework in rhetoric and composition at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where her interests included community literacies and literacy within incarcerated populations. She taught first-year writing at UMass before leaving academia to work in nonprofit communications. Most recently she’s worked for a large regional food bank, managing social media strategy, storytelling, fundraising, and crisis communications. She has continued to teach creative writing and adult basic literacy as a volunteer in prisons and in refugee communities in Tucson, Arizona, and volunteers as a mentor to incarcerated writers with PEN America’s Prison and Justice Writing Program.
CG

Also by Courtney Gustafson

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Praise for The Cats of Poets Square

[A] poignant, beautifully written debut memoir

BookPage

A warm memoir about loneliness, love and ... connection ... affecting testimony to the need for caring

Kirkus Review

An illuminating and heart-warming read that lays testament to the fact that kindness does indeed rule

Buzz Magazine

Courtney Gustafson writes with uncommon grace about the castoff, the abandoned, the invisible. This book should be read and treasured for its ability to make the reader more human and humane

Lauren Slater, author of Blue Dreams

Poets Square is charming and tender, funny-sad, quirky in the best possible way. It’s a story about care and compassion and acts of kindness big and small. I flew through it – and I’m not even a cat person

Chloë Ashby, author of Wet Paint

Cats are mystical beings, bridging the spiritual and the tangible. Courtney Gustafson’s Poet Square is a book that helps us connect to this spiritual world, offering a bridge to the ethereal

Ai Weiwei

Deftly intertwined with the individual stories of all these cats is her own story of how she got there … She is clear-eyed about the deviation of her life … I read this in two days and loved it

Esther Walker, Spike

In its euphoric kindness and tender suffering, this is an addictive book: pure catnip

Jay Griffiths, author of Wild

Truly moving; a heartfelt exploration of the humanity at the heart of animal welfare. Courtney masterfully weaves together stories of cats with stories of her own life and the lives of her community members—raw, flawed, and striving for goodness in a complex world. Her journey from cat observer to dedicated caregiver and community builder is profoundly inspiring

Hannah Shaw, New York Times bestselling author of Cats of the World

One need not be a cat person to be enchanted by this

Publishers Weekly