This book is what some would call a coffee-table book. It is simply beautiful from cover to cover. If you have a cat lover in your friends/family, this just might be the perfect gift for that individual.
It is a publication by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, with text by John P. O'Neill and Design by Alvin Grossman. The picture below is the overcover and while the hardback cover is relatively plain, there is a reason. Because the cover itself along with the first thicker page has what appears to be a hand painted signed portrait of two older kittens playing in grass and vines. If I had the ability, I would have this picture on my "gallery" wall.
On the next front page is a closeup picture of the eyes, nose and mouth of a cat. The eyes grab you and plead you to proceed...In fact, what would be normal front pages for any book, also includes a singular painting done by a signed artist. First, just the back of a cat and then a painter at work for a 1897 calendar while a calico cat sits beside the working tools, watching, perhaps, what drawing will come next...
John P. O'Neil who creates the text, also writes the Introduction, a short excerpt is provided below:
Cats, cats and more cats appear in the works of art that form the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. They figure in oil paintings by both the great masters and naive artists, and in prints, sculptures, drawings, ceramics, and textiles. A selection of these representations of felines has been gathered together in Metropolitan Cats. Cats familiar and fantastic, drawn from many periods and cultures throng these pages. Mischievous kittens from Chinese hand scrolls and from American lithographs jostle ancient and sacred Egyptian cats sculptured in bronze or painted on the walls of tombs. Cats from medieval manuscripts. Renaissance paintings, Japanese prints, and modern canvases join cats that figure in fairy tales and fables and cats that shard artists' lives. Cats have inspired love, reverence, fear, and hatred out of all proportions to their interest--or lack of interest--in the human race...
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Now Just For The Fun of It!
And, again, on National Cat Day, I want to remember my dearest cat friend, Stevie. I miss you...and wish you'd been given a tenth life, just so you'd cuddle next to my side once again...
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Many authors who use cats as a main character usually treat them as if they talked to each other. I believe it takes a certain cat together with a certain human to have that happen. Stevie lived with me more than five years and, yes, we talked to each other. Stevie, you were at a minimum one of my most faithful and trustworthy friends... I miss that camaraderie... Look for me someday in our heavenly homeplace...
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