Cat (kat), n. ...

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Margaret Woodhouse

Styled on a real acupuncture guide book, this guide informs the reader on the ways in which cats respond to being stroked, tickled and squeezed in the right places. It should bring smiles of recognition to anyone who enjoys coaxing a purr out of their cat. If you have ever petted a cat, then you know technique is everything. Stroke a cat too forcefully and your subject will shrink from your touch, too lightly and your subject will barely acknowledge your attentions. At last, Know Your Cat's Purr Points takes the guesswork out of pleasuring your pet. This lighthearted guide to the art of cat massage identifies the precise locations of the classic "purr points" and the best ways to activate them. With the aid of humorous instructions and delightful illustrations, learn such techniques as the Inter-Whisker Sidestep, Knuckle Dusters, the Flamenco Guitar, and the Full Fluff, the application of which is said to take both subject and applicant to a new level of contentment. Each technique is rated on both the "Purr Register" for visual response, and the "Purrometer" for auditory effect ranging from a moped to a dump truck, which leaves few, if any, practitioners sitting.

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Raymond N. Morris

Examining cartoons published between 1960 and 1979, Raymond Morris shows how artists dealt with particular aspects of Quebec's political experience. He looks at Berthio's drawings on Queen Elizabeth's visit and Dupras's on President de Gaulle's; Girerd's and Berthio's on Quebec-Ottawa relations; Girerd's on the referendum campaign; and Girerd's and Aislin's on the English minority in Quebec. He points out recurring tensions, oppositions, and associations and analyses them from a sociological perspective. One of Morris's major objectives is to better understand the framework through which ideas presented in cartoons are filtered to their audience, particularly the metaphors that underlie the frame, message, content, and form of the cartoons. Morris argues that the carnivalization of political figures and events, whereby the social structure is mockingly inverted and society's values and taboos are exaggerated until they become ridiculous, is a central metaphor governing Quebec cartoons of this period. He also explores the metaphor of the family, with England and France as grandparents, Canada and Quebec as parents, and the official-language minorities as children.

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Midas Dekkers

'People love animals - a stroke here, a pat there, a quick nuzzle in that gorgeous fur... the amount of cuddling they get can make you jealous. In Holland, dogs are caressed more than people. Not as thoroughly, though: that one spot, somewhere down below, generally remains untouched...'. Generally, but certainly not always. Kinsey's research showed that 8 per cent of men and 3.5 per cent of women had had sex with an animal, and that in rural areas the figure for men was closer to 50 per cent. Yet bestiality is almost universally condemned. While our love for animals is extolled as noble and 'natural', all erotic elements in the relationship between humans and other species are vilified and proscribed, thus consigning them to the realm of exotic pornography or crude innuendo. Even so, something remains of physical love for animals. In different forms, sublimated or occasionally celebrated, its traces can be found throughout art and popular culture: in Leda and the Swan, Beauty and the Beast or the Lorelei; in a lubricious menagerie of satyrs and centaurs, wolfmen and vampires, all the way through to King Kong and Fritz the Cat, pony clubs and amorous dolphins, or even advertisements for luxury catfoods. Dearest Pet uncovers and explores those traces, illuminating the ambivalence of human attitudes to cross-species sexuality. Its author, the biologist and broadcaster Midas Dekkers, has analysed bestiality in all its aspects - physical, psychological and legal - and examined its representations in religion and mythology, art and literature, pornography and advertising. Beautifully - and sometimes bizarrely - illustrated, his book is neither drily academic nor pruriently trivial, but erudite, witty and challenging: the first history of the last taboo. A book for animal lovers, and for those who are just their good friends.

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Hugh Kenner

Creator of the monomaniacal Wile E. Coyote and his endlessly elusive prey, the Road Runner, Chuck Jones has been responsible for many classics of animation featuring Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, and Elmer Fudd. Hugh Kenner, master wordsmith and technophile, reveals in cartoon-like sequences the irrepressible humor and profound reflection that shape Chuck Jones's work. Kenner also x-rays the inner world of cartooning, from its beginnings as a technological innovation, through its heyday as six-minute full-animation shorts for the movies, to its eventual shift to television, where Jones animated features such as The Grinch Who Stole Christmas and Rikki Tikki Tavi. Unlike Walt Disney, Chuck Jones and his fellow animators at Warner Bros. were not interested in cartoons that mimicked reality. Instead, they pursued the reality of the imagination, the Toon world where believability is more important than realism and where movement is the ultimate aesthetic arbiter. By describing the erudition and kinetic humor in great works like What's Opera, Doc? and Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2 century, Hugh Kenner offers a new understanding not only of cartooning culture but also of art's relationship to technology, criticism, freedom, and imagination.