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What We're Reading: Are Show Biz Cats Happy?

  One of the Amazing Acro-Cat performers has been taught to push a tiny shopping cart.
One of the Amazing Acro-Cat performers has been taught to push a tiny shopping cart.
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Amazing Acro-Cats

CHICAGO — Ready, set, go...

Purrr-fect Ponderings: A New York Times feature story on the Amazing Acro-Cats, a Chicago-based traveling feline circus, includes an interesting question, says senior editor Andrew Herrmann:

How do the cats feel about being in show biz?

The critters — who are trained to balance on balls, push shopping carts across a stage, jump through hoops and other awesome stunts — aren't being harmed, opines a University of Pennsylvania veterinary professor.

“Emotionally, it’s not bad for the cat” to be taught tricks, he tells the Times. “One ethical thing is whether it’s appropriate to watch animals mimicking human behavior, but I don’t really think that a cat cares about this. The action for the cat, playing on an instrument, it’s not fun, but they’re waiting for the treat.”

Which aisle is the kitty litter in? [Amazing Acro-Cats]

Tiny House Backlash, Finally: Remember when moving out of a studio apartment was something to aspire to? Then along came the tiny house movement and now we're all supposed to feel decadent for having a living room that can fit a couch and a chair and doesn't double as a kitchen/bedroom/closet. As much as reporter Patty Wetli is intrigued by the idea of idea of the tiny house, frankly she finds the people who live in them more than a little insufferable. And she is not alone. Lauren Modery's hilarious blog post "Dear People Who Live in Fancy Tiny Houses" skewers tiny house dwellers as wanna-be characters in a Wes Anderson movie and asks the really important questions like where these people wash the tiny towel their entire family shares. "Do you have a tiny river that runs behind your tiny house? I bet you do. I bet your whole Goddamn property is whimsical."

Fewer Taxi Rides, Fewer Complaints: Last year, reporter Tanveer Ali talked to cab drivers and looked at city data to see if services like Uber and Lyft are driving down taxi complaints. "We are trying to behave ourselves. We are being more patient," one driver says. This week, The Atlantic looked at the effect of taxi complaints, both in New York City and Chicago, on a broader scale. It found that while people are riding fewer cabs, those people who are, are complaining less.

1st Chapter of "Mockingbird" Sequel Teases Fans.  Fifty-five years since the publication of "To Kill a Mockingbird," Harper Lee's "Go Set a Watchman" will be published on Tuesday, the Independent reports. "Mockingbird," about the six-year-old daughter of a single dad lawyer growing up in the American South and witnessing inequality and racism,  was a Pultizer Prize-winning hit. 

"Watchman," which was written before "Mockingbird," shows the daughter, Scout, as an adult returning to her hometown of Maycomb, Ala., where her once strong father is 72 and cannot even shave himself. And her brother, Jem, is dead. And that's all in the first chapter. Wicker Park reporter Alisa Hauser plans to pick up a copy.

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