…at last he came to a hill which was quite covered with cats.
Cats here, cats there, cats and kittens everywhere.
Hundreds of cats,
Thousands of cats,
Millions and billions and trillions of cats.
written and illustrated by Wanda Gág
G.P. Putnam's Sons, [1956]
first published by Coward-MCann, 1928
recipient of the Newbery Honor, 1929
entered the public domain, 2024
Many of us have too much stuff. That became apparent to me when I Googled “decluttering.” I found pages and pages of articles and lists and how-tos describing different methods of getting the job done.
An interesting “rabbit hole,” for sure. You can try the 12-12-12 rule, the 20/20/20 rule, or the 50% rule. You can find the 135 decluttering method, the 4 C’s of decluttering, the 4 bin (or box) method. You can learn how to figure out what clothes to get rid of, how declutter a house in one day, and the psychological root of clutter.
You can discover what you should not do when you declutter, especially important if you’re a beginning declutterer.
No matter how much or little clutter we accumulate, part of our tendency to acquire stuff comes from a “scarcity mindset.” WebMD defines it as an obsession with what is lacking and the inability to focus on anything else.
An abundance mindset, the writers continue, allows us to see opportunities and possibilities.
If we come from a place of scarcity, we are fearful. There won’t be enough jobs, money, food, affection, freedom, time. You get it.
If we come from a place of abundance, though, we know there is plenty of everything. We are more generous, more willing to help one another, and more able to see long-term outcomes and consequences of our decisions and actions.
I was first introduced to these mindsets through Robin Wall Kimmerer’s classic Braiding Sweetgrass (Milkweed Editions, 2013). In it she shows how she lives in reciprocity with the natural world.
In her essay “The Serviceberry: An Economy of Abundance,” she says, “Gratitude creates a sense of abundance, the knowing that you have what you need. In that climate of sufficiency, our hunger for more abates and we take only what we need, in respect for the generosity of the giver.”
When our first response is gratitude, the natural follow-up is reciprocity, the desire to give a gift in return.
What gift can I give a plant? you might ask yourself. Or a tree?
Ms. Kimmerer suggests a direct response. “We can clear away weeds giving our plants more room to grow. We can provide water, especially when rain is not plentiful. Cover against the cold, or a donation to a local land trust so more land can be used for habitat. Or “making art that invites others into the web of reciprocity.”
When we accept Earth’s bounty as our gifts, we change our relationship to Earth and the gifts we receive. According to Ms. Kimmerer, the power of “gift thinking” is this: We’re “likely to take much better care of the gift hat than the commodity hat, because it is knit of relationships.” When we are in relationship with our family, our neighbors, our friends, our Earth, we feel gratitude.
How we think and feel translates to how we behave. We become gentler, kinder, more generous, even, some say, more creative.
But our economies have monetized everything from wild berries to our National parks. In our for-profit, money-based economy we need to pay workers, owners, creators for their energy, time, creativity, so they in turn can pay for their own necessities, luxuries, and gifts they give to others.
I’m not saying we should, or even could, move our society toward a gift economy. But when we pluck the tomatoes from the vines we nurtured in our gardens and snip the parsley growing bravely next to them, when we trim the rose bush, pull weeds, and speak to our houseplants, we can be mindful of the work they are constantly doing for us and feel gratitude for that work.
When we choose our produce at the local grocery store, we can think of the growers, harvesters, shippers, shelf-stockers, and clerks who serve our needs. And feel gratitude, there, too.
I can’t begin to guess what was in Wanda Gág’s mind when she published Millions of Cats in 1928. (see the quote at the top) But her society was much the way ours is now. In 1928, we were coming to the end of the First Gilded Age. Railroad tycoons, industrialists, and politicians amassed great fortunes, while the wages of the vast majority of our population stagnated.
As a side note, all those hundreds and trillions of cats fought each other until only one skinny cat was left. When asked why the other cats didn’t kill her, she replied, “When you asked who was the prettiest, I didn’t say anything. So nobody bothered about me.” The old man and the old woman took good care of the kitten until she was a “very pretty cat after all.”
Turns out one cat was enough. And there was plenty of love for all of them.
Mark Twain coined the term in the title of his 1873 novel, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, to describe how the shiny surface of society looked beautiful, but the reality hiding beneath the gilt was made of a hard-working and hurting population.
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby was a commercial flop after he published it in 1925. It did not gain popularity until the 1940s when it was sent to soldiers fighting in WWII. Now it appears on high school reading lists and is considered one of our “great American novels.” If you haven’t read it in a while, you might want to read it again, if only to see and compare it with where we are now.
It remains to be seen whether we as a society will turn to each other in fear or in gratitude.
I’m reading Across So Many Seas by Ruth Behar (Nancy Paulsen Books, 2024). Behar was awarded a 2025 Newbery honor and the 2025 Sydney Taylor Book Award honor. In a saga spanning the years from Spain’s 1492 expulsion of Jews during the Inquisition to 2023 Miami, readers learn the history of one family’s journey from “standing on the shoulders of ancestors” to a momentous discovery made during a heritage trip back to Spain.
Be curious! (and grateful)
Cats here, cats there, cats and kittens everywhere.
Hundreds of cats,
Thousands of cats,
Millions and billions and trillions of cats.
written and illustrated by Wanda Gág
G.P. Putnam's Sons, [1956]
first published by Coward-MCann, 1928
recipient of the Newbery Honor, 1929
entered the public domain, 2024
Many of us have too much stuff. That became apparent to me when I Googled “decluttering.” I found pages and pages of articles and lists and how-tos describing different methods of getting the job done.
An interesting “rabbit hole,” for sure. You can try the 12-12-12 rule, the 20/20/20 rule, or the 50% rule. You can find the 135 decluttering method, the 4 C’s of decluttering, the 4 bin (or box) method. You can learn how to figure out what clothes to get rid of, how declutter a house in one day, and the psychological root of clutter.
You can discover what you should not do when you declutter, especially important if you’re a beginning declutterer.
No matter how much or little clutter we accumulate, part of our tendency to acquire stuff comes from a “scarcity mindset.” WebMD defines it as an obsession with what is lacking and the inability to focus on anything else.
An abundance mindset, the writers continue, allows us to see opportunities and possibilities.
If we come from a place of scarcity, we are fearful. There won’t be enough jobs, money, food, affection, freedom, time. You get it.
If we come from a place of abundance, though, we know there is plenty of everything. We are more generous, more willing to help one another, and more able to see long-term outcomes and consequences of our decisions and actions.
I was first introduced to these mindsets through Robin Wall Kimmerer’s classic Braiding Sweetgrass (Milkweed Editions, 2013). In it she shows how she lives in reciprocity with the natural world.
In her essay “The Serviceberry: An Economy of Abundance,” she says, “Gratitude creates a sense of abundance, the knowing that you have what you need. In that climate of sufficiency, our hunger for more abates and we take only what we need, in respect for the generosity of the giver.”
When our first response is gratitude, the natural follow-up is reciprocity, the desire to give a gift in return.
What gift can I give a plant? you might ask yourself. Or a tree?
Ms. Kimmerer suggests a direct response. “We can clear away weeds giving our plants more room to grow. We can provide water, especially when rain is not plentiful. Cover against the cold, or a donation to a local land trust so more land can be used for habitat. Or “making art that invites others into the web of reciprocity.”
When we accept Earth’s bounty as our gifts, we change our relationship to Earth and the gifts we receive. According to Ms. Kimmerer, the power of “gift thinking” is this: We’re “likely to take much better care of the gift hat than the commodity hat, because it is knit of relationships.” When we are in relationship with our family, our neighbors, our friends, our Earth, we feel gratitude.
How we think and feel translates to how we behave. We become gentler, kinder, more generous, even, some say, more creative.
But our economies have monetized everything from wild berries to our National parks. In our for-profit, money-based economy we need to pay workers, owners, creators for their energy, time, creativity, so they in turn can pay for their own necessities, luxuries, and gifts they give to others.
I’m not saying we should, or even could, move our society toward a gift economy. But when we pluck the tomatoes from the vines we nurtured in our gardens and snip the parsley growing bravely next to them, when we trim the rose bush, pull weeds, and speak to our houseplants, we can be mindful of the work they are constantly doing for us and feel gratitude for that work.
When we choose our produce at the local grocery store, we can think of the growers, harvesters, shippers, shelf-stockers, and clerks who serve our needs. And feel gratitude, there, too.
I can’t begin to guess what was in Wanda Gág’s mind when she published Millions of Cats in 1928. (see the quote at the top) But her society was much the way ours is now. In 1928, we were coming to the end of the First Gilded Age. Railroad tycoons, industrialists, and politicians amassed great fortunes, while the wages of the vast majority of our population stagnated.
As a side note, all those hundreds and trillions of cats fought each other until only one skinny cat was left. When asked why the other cats didn’t kill her, she replied, “When you asked who was the prettiest, I didn’t say anything. So nobody bothered about me.” The old man and the old woman took good care of the kitten until she was a “very pretty cat after all.”
Turns out one cat was enough. And there was plenty of love for all of them.
Mark Twain coined the term in the title of his 1873 novel, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, to describe how the shiny surface of society looked beautiful, but the reality hiding beneath the gilt was made of a hard-working and hurting population.
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby was a commercial flop after he published it in 1925. It did not gain popularity until the 1940s when it was sent to soldiers fighting in WWII. Now it appears on high school reading lists and is considered one of our “great American novels.” If you haven’t read it in a while, you might want to read it again, if only to see and compare it with where we are now.
It remains to be seen whether we as a society will turn to each other in fear or in gratitude.
I’m reading Across So Many Seas by Ruth Behar (Nancy Paulsen Books, 2024). Behar was awarded a 2025 Newbery honor and the 2025 Sydney Taylor Book Award honor. In a saga spanning the years from Spain’s 1492 expulsion of Jews during the Inquisition to 2023 Miami, readers learn the history of one family’s journey from “standing on the shoulders of ancestors” to a momentous discovery made during a heritage trip back to Spain.
Be curious! (and grateful)
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