Cats = Comedy
-- Publishers Weekly, 7/14/2008
Watch out, Garfield: You're no longer the only funny feline on the block. The new game in town: LOLcats. To play, find a photo of a cat online and add a misspelled caption that reflects the cat's POV.. Or, in the case of Mario Garza's stuffonmycat.com, skip the words and give that cat a beer... or a diaper... or a beanie... or a banana. "As soon as we saw it, we thought it was genius," says Chronicle Books editor Matt Robinson. "It was able to elicit the instant laugh, and there's something about the volume of it—with so many people taking shots of their cats and sending them in, it creates a momentum of its own." Two years ago the publisher took 200 of the most ridiculous photos and turned out Stuff on My Cat: The Book, which has now sold just over 150,000 copies. Now, after a sequel, postcard books, calendars and innumerable tortured felines, the publisher will capitalize on one of the most-visited areas of Garza's blog, presenting Wet Cats next month.
But that's not all: In October, Fireside will publish My Cat Hates You, written by Jim Edgar, the author of the New York Times bestseller Bad Cat. The same month, Ballantine has The Devious Book for Cats, a parody of the wildly successful Dangerous Book for Boys (penned by "Fluffy and Bonkers" and ghost-written, if you will, by those who brought you The Dangerous Book for Dogs). In November, Gotham will release I Can Has Cheezburger?, based on the popular blog, which, according to the publisher, has received more than 30 million page views and about 500 new LOLcats submitted each day. With millions of cat photos in the site's archives, the humor can get very self-referential, says Gotham's Mulligan, "it's strange and off-the-wall, but in the end, you get it." Perhaps it's only fitting to close out the year with this sentiment from a Three Rivers Press paperback, which will appear on December 30: It's A Cat's World... You Just Live in It. —S.J.R.
