H. S. Toshack has written a third book in his Paka Mdogo: Little Cat series. Our little heroine is Sheena, a domestic cat. As in her first two books, Sheena is off on an adventure.
In The Meerkat Wars, Sheena's family goes on an African Safari. Sheena stows away in the back of their vehicle, and ends up in the middle of a warzone. There is a war amongst the tribes of Meerkat in the Baragandiri National Park. Sheena becomes the mediator, and hopeful peacemaker for the Meerkat.
As in any situation involving war, there is violence. However, this is a chapter novel for young adults. As an educator, H. S. Toshack handles these situations with intelligence and moral lessons. Tolerance and acceptance are stressed. The book is filled with natural facts and interaction of Meerkat. The lessons are easily applicable to human nature, as well.
I highly recommend this book and series. Well written, the books are both adventurous and educational. H. S. Toshack plans more books based on his Paka Mdogo: Little Cat. His following of readers continues to grow in number, and in age. ( )

The writing was amazing and I couldn't stop reading it. Since the book seemed like it was written in European style it was hard to understand some words. I thought the plot was well executed on the back of the book. There were pictures of all the animals that were mentioned other than meerkats and the cat Sheena. In the beginning though Sheena did get lost from her campsite the meerkats gladly took her in and cared for her. I thought that was really kind of them. There were parts that I cheered for one of the characters and that really made the book feel interactive. Overall the book was excellent and I can't wait to read more books in the series. ( )

I've always had a soft spot for books that involved groups of animals undertaking some adventure, or caught up in some conflict: Watership Down, Charlotte's Web, Tailchaser's Song, The Incredible Journey, the Redwall series...so I was very excited to read H.S. Toshack's The Meerkat Wars, a story of two tribes of meerkats and a very clever, very thoughtful little house cat.

Sheena is the small black and white pet cat of the Allen family, who live in Africa. She creeps into the back of the Allen's Land Rover as they embark on a camping trip to Baragandiri National Park, and she is inadvertently left behind in the hot desert sand after a pit stop. An encounter with a nasty scorpion leads Sheena to her first meeting with the Duwara tribe of meerkats, and as she spends more time with her new companions, Sheena becomes deeply involved in their struggle with a neighbouring tribe, the Utongo. It seems the two tribes, which live on either side of a deep, dark gorge, have long been at odds over the idea that each tribe has their own sun. As the sun is a renewing, life-giving force central to their lives (almost a deity, although this is never stated), this two-sun idea is worth so much to the Utongo and the Duwara that tribe members risk - and sacrifice - their lives to uphold their beliefs.

Sheena, a smart, creative, and empathetic cat, is determined to use all of the resources available to her to stop the meerkats from destroying each other. As she sets her plans in motion, she encounters much adversity, including acid-spewing ants, a hungry monitor lizard, a family of prickly porcupines, and a herd of den-destroying buffalo. The hardest part of all, though, is convincing the meerkats to co-operate and save themselves.

Undoubtedly, part of the charm of this book is the way Sheena's character is drawn - you can't help but admire her tenacity and resourcefulness, the way she thinks on her feet, and her countless selfless and kind deeds. And, as Sheena learns about her new meerkat friends, the reader learns about them as well - how they sleep, how they raise their young, how they eat, how they survive in the stifling African heat. (I certainly know more about meerkats now than I ever did before!).

Above all, I loved Toshack's writing style - there are a ton of word-plays going on in this book, really fun stuff that would appeal to both children and adults. Humour, combined with a massive attention to detail, make this book an absolute delight to read. I think it would be a perfect selection to read aloud.

Now, I simply MUST go back and read the first two books in the series!

I received this book through LibraryThing. I was looking forward to reading it. However, I have not been able to read it. It is slow and has way too many descriptions that don't add to the story at all. Regretfully, I have given up trying to read it.

If you are the kind of animal lover that revels in the antics of the smaller creatures on our planet and that chooses to look beyond the attention-grabbing Big Five of the African continent, then you just might be the ideal audience for The Meerkat Wars by H.S. Toshack (PakaMdogo Press, 2012; ISBN: 978-0-9563236-2-0). This inspiring tale of how a cat helps a clan of meerkats to fend off an invading clan that wishes to take over its territory makes for a heart-pounding and insightful read, not only teaching youngsters (and those of an older generation who still are blessed with the ability to savor such writing) of the habits of these relatively small inhabitants of the African plains, but also encouraging them to empathize with others who may, in appearance at least, seem to be significantly different to themselves, especially at first sight.

The characters that comprise the cast of this tale all come to life under Toshack’s thoughtful and perceptive penmanship. Even if a child has never before heard of the strange breed of mongoose that also bears the name ‘suricate’, they are bound to warm to the author’s lively descriptions of this apparently sun-worshipping breed of small mammal that spends so much of its life underground. By starting from familiar territory, with a cat that, unbeknownst to its owners, stows away on board their Land Rover when they go on safari in the Baragandiri National Park, and who gets lost almost as soon as she arrives in the Park, Toshack cleverly elicits the sympathy of his audience, many of whom most probably have cats as pets, or who have relatives or friends who do. Sheena, despite being the pivotal figure in the story, in her position as a link between the two warring clans, provides an understandable and empathetic connection between the familiar and the unknown on more than one level. Meerkats, on her first encountering them, are as strange to her as they are likely to be for any human who has not yet been exposed to the wonderful range of creatures that there are to encounter in the African bush.

Although Toshack is, at times, inclined to indulge in a fair measure of anthropomorphism, he conveys with ease insights into not only the way of life of meerkats, but also into that of other animals that Sheena encounters in her adventures, such as porcupines and honey badgers. It comes as no surprise, then, to find that Toshack has both lived and worked in Africa, nor that he is a retired English teacher and educational consultant. Indeed, he takes great enjoyment in playing around with the English language, such as when Sheena first thinks porcupines are called ‘porcuspines’ and has to be corrected in her language usage. Toshack’s great sense of humor adds an extra bite to the ease and flow of his writing, which is complemented by numerous fine drawings by Nelson McAlister.

If you and your children become as enamored with Toshack’s and Sheena’s (she is accredited with coauthor status) story as many others have been, don’t fret when you come to the end of this marvelous semi-allegorical tale–there are two others that you should also feel drawn to read: Paka Mdogo and The Gradual Elephant. ( )