Cat

“There may be no creature on the earth that has captured the human imagination more deeply than the house cat,” writes YouTuber Hannah Shaw, who posts as Kitten Lady, in her introduction to this charming survey of felines in art. The fascination with cats traces back to antiquity, when they were seen as symbols of the divine, and continued through the centuries, with knickknacks like the grinning, wide-eyed Kit-Cat Clock, an “icon of twentieth-century industrial design” created by Earl Arnault to cheer up customers during the Great Depression, and the silly feline meme sensations of the 2010s (think Grumpy Cat). The book ranges far and wide, its juxtapositions sparking unexpected resonances. For example, the cat in a painting by 17th-century Dutch artist Clara Peeters, poised to disrupt a display of fish, has a cocky power similar to the subject of the psychedelic 1980 painting “Big Cat” by American folk artist Nellie Mae Rowe, which appears on the facing page. The editors corral work from a broad selection of artists and countries, and captions provide welcome background, especially for oddities like the feline-shaped swimming pool at Miami’s Fountainebleau Hotel, or the cover of jazz musician Charles Mingus’s cat toilet-training guide. As whimsical and amusing as its subject, this offers plenty for cat people to paw through. (Feb.)