26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Twenty-seven Years and Still Purring, November 22, 2001
This review is from: Cat: Seventeenth Anniversary Edition (Paperback)
I bought this book by accident. Well, not really, but I allowed another reviewer to seduce me into buying the new Kliban Cat Calendar and I saw this book listed as well on the calendar's detail page. I saw the words 'anniversary edition' and decided to order it. It was only after I received it that I discovered that seventeenth anniversary of "Cat" was in 1992, two years after Kliban's death. So 2002 is really the 27th anniversary. All that being said, I want to state that this little book would be fantastic no matter what it's age is, or what the age of it's reader is either. I love this book.
There, I've said it, this crusty old man goes all soft hearted when he leafs through a 25 year old book of cat cartoons. As well he should! Kliban captures something entirely different from other feline cartoonists. They aren't kitten cute, nor are they wicked Garfields, as Art Spiegelman points out in his introduction. Instead they are the light hearted chubby denizens of a world of whimsical, good natured self-interest. They relax at the beach, dream of the stars, and steal cheese sandwiched with equal aplomb. They exchange traditional concepts of cat beauty for an enticing comfyness which only a cat lover could understand.
Love is an important and operative word in this little volume. Not one of Kliban's cartoons is made at the expense of cats. Instead, each opens a door to the essential nature of our furry friends, and the non-judgmental affection that they display to those in their circle of trust. A snarl turns into a lick, a meow into a purr and then all is well. Kliban is the only artist I know who has managed to really capture the feline Mona Lisa smile. You know, the one that cats use to melt their owners. Cats forgive with a grace from which us humans could learn a great deal. And Kliban captures it all. Many of the cartoons are not really cartoons, but innocent studies of the artists own cats, drawn with genuine affection.
Art Spiegelmann, artist and author of MAUS, provides a short and delightful introduction to the anniversary edition, and there are 16 pages of Kliban's color work for our further delectation. Everyone who likes cats needs to have this book around. Placed somewhere so that it will fall to hand in those irritating moments when we need to look at cats in order to remember what it is to be human.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Kliban captures the both the wisdom and mischief of cats, June 16, 2006
This review is from: Cat: Seventeenth Anniversary Edition (Paperback)
Alas, Bernard "Hap" Kliban is gone, but his genius lives on in "Cat", a book of cartoons that captures the personality of the cat as seen by cat lovers. Strangely enough, Kliban was a cartoonist for "Playboy", contributing cartoons for that publication until his death. The cat cartoons were discovered by a "Playboy" editor and the 1975 book "Cat" was born.
Kliban's cats are rotund bug-eyed creatures with a smile on their faces that says the joke is on you. The cartoons include the cats doing nonsensical things as well as performing deeds that you always suspected they might be guilty of as they interact with dogs, mice, people, and in some cases impersonate people. Included among the cartoons is a cat playing a banjo singing a tune of his own making with the lyrics "Love to eat them mousies. Mousie's what I love to eat...". For those that can remember the days when a television was a heat emanating device that invariably attracted napping cats there is a cartoon of a couple sitting in front of a television with a transparent cat standing in front of the screen. Their comments: "We enjoy the television set now that we got ourselves a transparent cat!". Interspersed among the "Kliban cats" are truly beautiful and elegant drawings of Kliban's own real-life cats, to whom he dedicated this book.
If you enjoyed Gary Larson's "Far Side" series and you are a cat lover I'm sure you'll enjoy this book. I highly recommend it.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Love to read them Cat Cartoonies, Kliban What I Love to Read, March 31, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: Cat: Seventeenth Anniversary Edition (Paperback)
Speaking as a writer of humor/satire/parody (most recently, Scratching the'Net: Web Sites for Cats - a book answering the question, "What would the internet look like if it were run by cats?"), I have always loved Kliban's work, particularly his insightful and funny cat cartoons. To have them all in a collection like this is a joy. And colorization here is a good thing (although his unique black and white style is classic).
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