After two weeks in print, WILL MY CAT EAT MY EYEBALLS?: Big Questions from Tiny Mortals About Death is #8 on the New York Times nonfiction hardcover bestseller list. Death sells. Caitlin Doughty is a mortician who has written a book with strange facts about dead bodies and death that simultaneously will make you gag and smile, but won't make you die laughing. In fact, that's one question that isn't answered here. Can you die laughing? Maybe in the next book, Caitlin.

Doughty compiles 35 questions about death that she's been asked, in many cases by children, and answers them in a delightful manner. WILL MY CAT EAT MY EYEBALLS? is filled with answers to such weighty questions as "Can I keep my parents' skulls after they die?" "What would happen if you die on a plane?" "We buried my dog in the backyard, what would happen if we dug him up?" and "Will I poop when I die?”

"Caitlin Doughty is a mortician who has written a book with strange facts about dead bodies and death that simultaneously will make you gag and smile, but won't make you die laughing."

So do we poop when we die? According to Doughty, the answer is mostly yes: "You might poop when you die. Fun, right? I enjoy pooping in my day-to-day life, so it's comforting to think that this activity will continue after my death. My apologies and thanks to the nurse or mortician who will deal with the cleanup." She goes on to explain, with humor and straightforward talk, why that happens and what the exceptions are. It's perhaps more information than the child who originally asked that question bargained for, but it certainly seems complete and real.

No, your hair and fingernails do not keep growing after you die. Can your hamster be buried with you? Doughty, thankfully, is not comfortable with the idea of killing a live pet to be buried with its owner, but if the animal is already dead, all bets are off.

In the chapter "I went to the show where dead bodies with no skin play soccer. Can we do that with my body?" Doughty explains that the show is called Body Worlds. She describes in detail how the bodies are preserved and how they are obtained. Apparently, there is a waiting list to donate your body to the exhibition. She ends with a warning that sometimes body parts are stolen. In New Zealand, someone snatched a few plastinated toes from a cadaver: "Each toe was valued at more than three thousand dollars --- pretty pricey toes, though not quite an arm and a leg."

Doughty's writing is unusually conversational in tone for a book with subjects that can be considered taboo. Not only does she manage to make it extremely informative, throughout she includes her comments with sometimes profound thoughts, real humor and a significant dose of brilliant wit. Her previous titles, SMOKE GETS IN YOUR EYES: And Other Lessons from the Crematory and FROM HERE TO ETERNITY: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death, were both bestsellers. No wonder.

While children asked these questions, this book is written for adults. But there's nothing in these pages that would preclude those curious kids from finding answers here. It might give them nightmares, but children are often hardier than parents think. Reread some Grimm’s fairy tales, and you will realize that those stories are grimmer than anything in the pages of WILL MY CAT EAT MY EYEBALLS?