Cats Cats Cats: A Collection of Great Cat Cartoons
S. Gross, editor
Perennial Library (Harper & Row)
Fiction, Anthology/Comic Strips
Themes: Felines
***
Description
A collection of cat cartoons from many sources.
Review
This is an older book, but even considering that, the humor is dated. Many of the comics feature the aging chestnuts of unfixed pets with unwanted kittens, throwing shoes at strays, and kicking the cat outside all night - the type of jokes that might have been funny in the 1950's. I'm delusional enough to hope that spaying and neutering are more mainstream these days, as is keeping cats safely indoors, and animal abuse has never been funny to me. Some of the cartoonists treat cats with such contempt that I wonder why they bother drawing them at all, or why Gross thought they'd be worth including in a collection aimed at cat-lovers. A few others take way too many panels to get absolutely nowhere. For all that, there are a few fun cartoons here, but the dross outweighs the gold. It didn't hack me off enough for a Bad rating, but the general blandness and dated humor place it firmly at the low end of the three-star Okay territory. (I spared it the half-star deduction on consideration of the book's age and the mentality involved: the kind of people who compiled this book and find it funny are simply incapable of updating their views.)