It’s hard to believe, but it’s been almost exactly 10 years since my book, Citizen Canine: Our Evolving Relationship with Cats and Dogs, was published. It was a long journey to get there–marking one of the most stressful and transformative periods of my life–and it changed me both as a writer and as a person.

The idea to write the book first struck me in early 2010. I was young in my career as a journalist, and though I always hoped I’d write a book someday, I assumed “someday” would be decades in the future. But an itch formed. I began to feel, ever more persistently, that I had something unique to say about the strikingly elevated status of pets in modern society–how we got there, how it’s changing both us and them–and no single article could scratch it. So I decided to go all-in.

I spent months reading as much as I could about the domestication and cognition of cats and dogs, their current status and impact on society, and their remarkably evolving legal status. I probably read more law articles than the average first-year law student. The endeavor–which continued through finding an agent, drafting a proposal, and writing the book itself–consumed my nights and weekends. Shouldering the project on top of a full-time job, a new teaching position, and the birth of my twin girls nearly broke me. As did my frequent traveling for the book; my reporting took me from the hidden enclaves of my adopted city, Baltimore, to the farmlands of Indiana, to an air force base in Texas.

The reporting–and especially my travels–didn’t just enrich the book, they enriched me. Over the course of four years, I’d come face-to-face with majestic gray wolves, explore the postdiluvian ruins of New Orleans (and the pets that still inhabit them), tag along with police officers investigating animal abuse on the rough streets of South Central Los Angeles, and meet a dog on death row in Georgia who became one of the only animals in the country to get his own lawyer.

The effort paid off. Citizen Canine is one of my proudest achievements–an intimate, probing book about pets that contains stories no one else has told. Its pages reveal not only how dogs and cats became the most cherished animals on the planet, but how their evolving status in society reveals truths about our own place in this world. For we have not only changed our pets–they have changed us. As I write towards the end of the book:

As much as pets have civilized us, I think they’ve also kept us wild. Of all the roles they play, the most important may be that of shamans. Instead of bridging the gap between our world and the spirit world, they serve as mediators between our asphalt jungle and the real one. All pets are a bit like feral cats, straddling the line between wild and domestic, person and beast. And because they can cross this boundary, they serve as a lifeline—perhaps the last lifeline—to our animal past. We don’t just need them to comfort us and play with us. We need them to remind us of who we are and where we came from.

My high school history teacher once told me that everyone has one great book in them–something that only they could write, something they were put on this world to write. For me, that book is Citizen Canine. It has changed my life. I hope you’ll give it a chance to change yours.

Is it tuna? (Credit: FBenjr123, Wikimedia Commons)

Cat are known as finicky eaters, and my current fur babies are no exception. Iggy and Spud have turned their noses up at a variety of flavors in their two short years with us, but things finally clicked when we introduced them to premium tuna cat food. Suddenly it was all they wanted–and nothing else.

Iggy and Spud aren’t alone in their love of tuna. The dish is a staple of everything from New Yorker cartoons to Meow Mix jingles. And fish in general is such a hit with felines that an estimated 6% of all wild fish caught gets turned into moist cat food alone. That’s an odd diet for an animal that evolved in the desert.

Now researchers think they know why our feline friends have this curious craving. As I write in Science, researchers have discovered that cat taste buds contain the molecular machinery needed to detect umami. That’s the savory flavor of various meats, and one of the five basic tastes in addition to sweet, sour, salty, and bitter. But the feline palate isn’t just find tuned to meat–as one might expect for an obligate carnivore. The team of scientists also discovered that the cat’s umami receptor responds especially vigorously to molecules found in tuna. In taste tests, cats in the study preferred water flavored with these compounds over all other dishes. Tuna appears to hit the “umami sweet spot” in cats, as one of the researchers told me.

Still, it’s unclear why cats would have evolved a taste for tuna. It may have become a useful adaptation to living with humans. As far back as 1500 B.C.E., cats are depicted eating fish in the art of Ancient Egypt. And by the Middle Ages, felines in some Middle Eastern ports were consuming large quantities of fish—including tuna—likely because they were feasting on the scraps left by fishers. Cats that had a hankering for tuna likely had a leg up on their fish-averse comrades.

If your own cat doesn’t like tuna, don’t sweat it. Researchers have shown that cats aren’t able to tase sugar, but my cat Jasper used to love marshmallows, which are basically just sugar and more sugar. Some feline mysteries, it seems, can’t fully be explained by science.

Stray cats Amman, Jordan. (Credit: Alexey Komarov, Wikimedia Commons)

Birth control for cats and dogs might sound like the setup for a joke, but it’s no laughing matter. There are more than 1.5 billion homeless dogs and cats in the world, suffering on the streets, being killed to stop the spread of rabies or protect wildlife, or getting euthanized in overcrowded shelters. Spay/neuter surgery can help keep pet numbers down–indeed it has made a massive impact on shelter euthanasia since the 1970s–but it’s too slow and too expensive to put a dent in the global overpopulation crisis.

That’s why scientists have been trying to come up with an alternative to the surgery for more than 20 years. They’ve been hoping to develop something like a shot or a pill–a one-time, permanent contraceptive that’s cheap and easy to administer. I wrote about these efforts in 2009, but nothing has worked–until now.

In a new study, researchers report a gene therapy approach that appears to contracept female cats for at least two years, and perhaps much longer.  The strategy delivers a gene for antimüllerian hormone, which is produced by follicles in the ovary that give rise to eggs. Cats that received the shot overproduced the hormone, which seems to disrupt the formation of their ovarian follicles, preventing ovulation. No cats given the shot became pregnant, despite spending lots of time with a willing male.

The study is small–there were only six treated cats and three controls–but experts say it’s by far the most promising progress they’ve seen towards the “holy grail” of pet contraception. If the approach proves safe and long-lasting (ideally permanent)–and if it works in dogs–it could truly revolutionize birth control for dogs and cats. No joking.

A classic German Shepherd (Hans Kemperman, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Most modern breeds as we know them trace back less than 160 years. And yet the supposed personalities of these dogs feel like they have been engrained forever. Labrador retrievers are lovable and friendly. Border collies are neurotic and energetic. Chihuahuas are yappy. But things aren’t quite that straightforward, according to a new study that puts these temperaments to the test.

Researchers drew on data from thousands of dogs across the U.S., including genetics and owner surveys. As expected, most breeds have a defined look. When you shop for a German Shepherd, you’re going to get a tall canine with a bushy tail and pointy ears. But behaviors such as playfulness, trainability, and attachment to people varied widely, even within the same breed. The bottom line, says one of the study authors: If you’re looking for a dog with a specific personality, “you shouldn’t shop out of a catalog. Each dog is an individual.” (A website the team set up shows just how hard it is to know what you might get.)

Read more about this research in my latest story for Science.