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A Hare, a Fox, an Owl, a Snail: Animal Memoirs Are Going Wild
Books about writers’ dogs and cats are a literary staple. Now there’s a booming subset of memoirs about writers’ relationships with less domestic creatures.
For much of her life, Catherine Raven felt worthless. Then she befriended a fox.
After growing up in an abusive home where she felt unwanted, Raven moved out at 15, and never quite felt comfortable around other people. In 2003, she was living in a cottage in a remote valley in Montana, working as a field guide, when a fox showed up one afternoon.
He returned day after day. Sometimes he brought her dead mice as presents; sometimes they played a game of chicken, with him inching closer until she backed down. He listened as she read him “The Little Prince.” If Raven wasn’t outside, the fox would peer into her windows, looking for her.
One night he brought his kits to her porch, then fell asleep, leaving her to babysit several rambunctious young foxes. The show of trust changed Raven’s life.
“That was a turning point in how I felt about myself,” Raven told me during a phone call from her home in southwest Montana. “I felt like, wow, I am somebody that a fox trusts.”
Raven recounts the story of their relationship in her 2021 memoir, “Fox and I.” An instant best seller, the book belongs to a booming subgenre of autobiography: memoirs about the surprising bonds between humans and wild animals.
Books about writers’ dogs and cats have long been a literary staple, with popular and critical hits like John Grogan’s best seller about his unruly Labrador, “Marley and Me,” and Caleb Carr’s love letter to his cat, “My Beloved Monster.” In recent years, the pet memoir category has expanded to include an array of other domesticated species — including chickens, goats, pigs, alpacas and donkeys, which feature in a surprising number of autobiographies.
