Painted cats
Reader CET sends an email full of pictures of painted cats. Snopes says the pictures are fake; they’re taken from a 2002 coffee-table book, Why Paint Cats, The Ethics of Feline Aesthetics, by Burton Silver and Hilary Busch. According to Snopes, it’s an elaborate send-up of both art books and cat books. The book is a sequel to the 1994 book by the same authors, Why Cats Paint, A Theory of Feline Aesthetics.
You can see some of the pictures for yourself. This is the comment I like best:
Anything to make those horrid, conceited creatures devoid of all dignity and self respect is fine by me.
I like the pictures, but I’m glad they’re fake. I’m not an animal rights activist; I don’t get too upset when stray cats disappear from the alley behind the Chinese restaurant. I do think that companion animals deserve to be treated with a certain amount of respect, if not for their sakes then for ours.
November 12th, 2008 at 9:34 pm
A hoax? Oh, my! How disappointing. I have the “Why Cats Paint” book and I have been encouraging my felines to at least attempt to paint, with no success. I suppose I should have known it was a hoax when the last chapter was about the art of furniture shredding, which puzzled me at the time.
The Charlie Chaplin rear end would have been difficult to paint - I have a hard time just cutting claws. I suppose I could douse them in paint (non-toxic) and use their little furry bodies as brushes.