Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? – Caitlin Doughty

In Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?, best selling author, funeral director and YouTube sensation Caitlin Doughty, answers questions received from children (of the organic, free range type – her words, not mine) curious about death.  Did you ever wonder what happens to an astronaut who dies in space?  Curious about the various colors that will appear during decomposition?  What about the somewhat new practice of building vertical graveyards?  All these questions and more are answered in Caitlin’s new book.

I’ve got to admit, at times this book made me uncomfortable.  While death happens to everyone, talking about it isn’t always easy.  However, after I settled in, Caitlin’s tone made a lot of my uneasiness disappear.  It’s funny that I didn’t have this reaction when I read her first book (When Smoke Gets In Your Eyes), but I think the specifics of certain deaths explored in this outing made things feel a bit more.. real?  I mean, dying alone while waiting to be discovered only due to decomposition is a pretty big fear of mine.

Between each answer (usually three to four pages in length) are wonderful drawings from Dianné Ruz capturing the nature of each question asked by a child.  I enjoyed these a lot and would love to have some of these prints hanging on our walls.  This structure often left me saying “OK, one more story before I turn out the lights”, which had me knocking this book out in only two days.

If you loved Caitlin’s first book (and presumably the second, which I’ve yet to read), or her YouTube channel, I can only imagine you’ll enjoy this as well.