Non Fiction: Cats by Seymour Simon:

    This book is a purely informational book about cats.  It starts out by talking about how all cats are hunting animals and like to prey on birds or insects.  Cats make good pets because they are not noisy like dogs, they are quiet friendly animals.  More than a hundred thousand years ago, wild cats were domesticated for the first time in Egypt.  Cats were used to protect stored grain from mice and other rodents.  They were such sacred animals that when one died, there was a period of mourning and the cat was mummified and buried in a casket in a cat cemetery.    This book then goes into detail about many different aspects about cats.  Some of these are: their eyes, how they eat, their whiskers, their memory, how they talk, their body language, how they have babies, and different varieties of cats.  This book is a really great book to read when you are thinking about getting a cat.  It can answer most of the common questions that you will have when thinking about investing in a cat.

    As an activity in the classroom I would have my students do research on an animal of their choice.  It can be a common indoor animal or any other animal they choose.  They will have to compile information, just as this book has.  Some of this would be the history or other information about the animal itself.  One thing I would definitely want the students to include in their book is questions in the back, just as the Seymour Simon book has.  These questions are questions that you need to ask before you decide to own this animal as a pet.  After the students have compiled all of their information then I would help them make it into a book.  Then after the entire class has finished we will have our own classroom library about many different animals.  


Cats Power point presentation (copy and past in new tab):
https://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0AUpz7vrJ0AS0ZGM0Y3FmejZfMGM5Nmc1NmQy&hl=en