The story behind a new book's strange dedication to Toast the cat

Of all the people in Jonathan Saha’s life worth dedicating his book to, none of them could match the impact, or lack thereof, of Toast the cat.

Saha’s cat “was no help at all,” reads the dedication page in “Colonizing Animals” which recently went viral on Twitter, collecting more than 266,000 likes.

“It felt appropriate to dedicate the book to the animal who had the biggest impact on my life,” Saha, a researcher, told NPR in an email, since working on the book made him appreciate how much animals shape human society.