Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? Answering Kids’ Questions about Death [Family Reads]

Why we chose Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? by Caitlin Doughty

Every day, funeral director Caitlin Doughty receives dozens of questions about death. 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. Illustrated by Dianné Ruz.  

Description abbreviated from Goodreads

Our Discussion

Content

Ash began our conversation with “I have nothing to say about this book”. I felt the same way. I responded with “It’s short, it’s boring, it’s underwhelming” but we immediately agreed ‘boring’ wasn’t the correct adjective. The content of Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? is interesting, in one way, but it’s easy to put down. It’s not compelling. It’s not really a book to sit down with and read for an hour (my mistake for doing that…). It is good for snippets before bed. You can read three pages and finish a ‘chapter’. It’s an ideal bathroom reader.

Unlike Doughty’s other two titles (Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and From Here to Eternity), this one didn’t expand our worldview or say something new to provoke our own reflections on death and dying. Doughty aims, in her work and writing, to break down the stigma around death. Ash and I aren’t sure this book accomplished that. It’s essentially an informative fact book. The questions and answers are scientific. There’s a lot of information about how bodies decompose. Does that make us feel more comfortable with death? Eh….

Ash made the great observation that Doughty conflates curiosity about death with becoming more comfortable with it in a different way than we do. The one question that appealed to us most – “Is it true people see a white light as they’re dying?” – is because it’s actually a question about dying, not what happens to our bodies after. The content of Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? is pretty different from Doughty’s other books.

Audience

Although this book says it answers kids’ questions, Doughty hasn’t written for children. Doughty makes some snarky/tongue in cheek comments addressing youth who might be reading the book but we don’t expect many kids to pick this one up. We found it in adult non-fiction in both the bookstore and library. Ash was surprised to find it’s not a children’s book. I don’t think that’s an unrealistic expectation, given how it’s been titled and marketed. It might have been a stronger book if Doughty had indeed written for children – perhaps as a middle grade non-fiction text with lots of photos and images to support the factual information within. Kids would probably appreciate the book’s content and learn more from it than we did.

Illustrations

The illustrations, though we both love them and think they’re cute, contribute to the ‘fun fact’ (rather than thought provoking) feel of the book. This is a slim volume; the illustrations feel a bit like padding. The cartoonish style also contributes to the ‘for kids’ vibe.

Final Thoughts

We both give this book ★★½. Overall, we found it a bit disappointing because we enjoyed Doughty’s other two titles and this was nothing like them. It’s not a ‘bad’ book – just not one for us. Have you read any of Doughty’s books? Does a Q&A book on death appeal to you?