Cattitude - Episode 281 Toby, Gus & Me: Choosing a Life Plus Cats with Rebecca van Laer

Cattitude - The #1 Cat Podcast

This week on Cattitude, Michelle Fern chats with writer and critic Rebecca van Laer about her debut memoir, Cat. Van Laer explores how our lives with cats reshape the wild we’ve tried to domesticate—what “tame,” “neuter,” and “indoors” say about nature and about us. She shares why she chose a life plus cats (not kids), and how “undomesticating” herself alongside her senior companions Toby and Gus reframed love, work, and family. From cats’ mysteriously divine histories to millennial burnout in a content-marketing grind, maternal fault lines, and the radical permission in feline laziness and pleasure, Rebecca’s reflections purr with humor and honesty—right down to Gus’s opinion: “I don’t want to be famous…I just want to go to the basement.”

EPISODE NOTES: Toby, Gus & Me: Choosing a Life Plus Cats with Rebecca van Laer

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2025-10-15 27 min Transcript

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