Rating: 
Summary: There should be a warning on this book.
Review: like a fool i was taken in by this hoax of a book and tried to paint my cat, Mr. Pie. needless to say he did NOT go for it. the peroxide burned his eyes and he scratched the hell out of my arms. i don't recommend trying to paint your cat. just buy this book and enjoy the photos instead. what was i thinking? paint + cats = disaster.
Rating: 
Summary: Wow ! Everyone who sees our copy of this book wants it !
Review: My wife and I borrowed a copy of this book from her friend. Since then, we have bought our own copy, and FOUR of our friends have purchased the book after seeing ours! What beautiful photography and wonderful designs. This book, for most people, is a MUST HAVE!
Rating:
Summary: A challenge to our thinking
Review: Occasionally we are lucky enough to experience moments in life when we are given the opportunity to challenge our thinking and review the assumptions we make about the world in which we live in a truly magical way. This book gave me just such an opportunity, making me laugh, reminding me of the magic contained in the everyday world in which I live and leaving me extremely grateful for the extraordinary talents of people such as Heather Busch and Burton Silver. Cats have for me always been mysterious creatures who give the impression that they know so much more about the unseen world than I do and who seem to view me with with a indulgent tolerance as I make my way through life alongside them. To be taken further into the magical and mythical world cats occupy via this book was both a joy and a delight. The beauty of the painted cats is compelling and the cleverness of the text undeniable. Well done the authors of a truly wonderful book that gives me ongoing pleasure!
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful & Hysterical
Review: Silver and Busch have done it again! Their first book, "Why Cats Paint," is the most hysterical art book I've ever seen and makes me chuckle to think about it. "Why Paint Cats" continues the put-on tradition even more, with the deadly serious tone of a true art book, and the hysterical premise of painting cats strange colors and designs. Yet as a book of cat photos, it is truly beautiful. I don't know how they actually got the great patterns on these cats (I suspect they are only in the photos), but the the effects are spectacular. This is a laugh-out-loud book for any art or cat fancier. The dead-pan seriousness, with its subtle underlying humor, extends even to the "Selected Bibliography," which includes: Rathbone, P. 2001, The Tenth Life. The Preservation and Display of Our Painted-But-Departed Feline Companions. Taxidermy Press, Edinburgh. I dare anyone to find the above title on www.Amazon.com! This book is a hoot from beginning to end. Enjoy! Roz
Rating: 
Summary: Outrageously creative body painting on cats
Review: The reviewer's first reaction was actually a negative one, considering that cats probably would not volunteer to participate as canvasses in this decorative display of human creativity. The authors explain that cats have been painted in India and Japan for centuries, and that there are petting rituals for preparing them to participate in this experience. In Ayuba, an independent territory of Botswana in Africa, cat faces are ritually painted to ward off evil spirits. A sign from the cat is required prior to commencing with the painting.
In contemporary western countries, this is now a fad. The results are astoundingly beautiful.
The reviewer was still left wondering about what cats' rights advocates would say, and still hesitant to recommend a book that appeared to be potentially unfriendly to felines, until his daughter showed him a book of parallel beautiful examples of human body painting:
Roberto Edwards (Photographer), Painted Bodies: By Forty-Five Chilean Artists, Abbeville Press 1996
Rating:
Summary: Great Coffee Table Book
Review: This is a great coffee table book. The cover draws you to it because you are wondering "Why does that cat look like a butterfly?" Then you open it and there are cats that look like pianos, clowns, fish, you name it! This is a fun book to look at. We have lent this book to so many people. At first they are like "no way" but then they look at it and have to borrow it. You can't just look at one page, you are so captivated that before you know it you are through the whole book! This is definitely a fun book to own, or at least borrow from someone. I recommend it along with "Why Cats Paint" by the same author. This is fun, even for cat lovers (the painting isn't cruel and it doesn't hurt the cats). I really recommend this book! ENJOY!!!!!
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful & Captivating
Review: This is a wonderful, informative, beautiful book. I fully suggest it for any cat lovers, at any age.
Rating:
Summary: Very funny book
Review: This is one of the most entertaining art books I've seen. The text is well-written enough to fool most people, and the only way I knew it was a spoof was I've read my share of art criticism and art history, even though I'm a biologist by training, and I think I can detect when someone is making fun of the whole business. Having figured out the text was a joke, it was only a hop, skip, and a jump to figuring out the cat paintings were probably fake and probably done on a computer. I'm not positive about this, since they look so realistic, but it seems likely. Also, it seems unlikely that any cat would sit still long enough to have such elaborate paintings done. Furthermore, if that wasn't enough, the author states that some of the paintings were by well-known artists that cost as much as $7000 each--not very likely. (Also I've never heard of any of these artists). Whether they're real or fake, the cat paintings are truly spectacular and are entertaining just by themselves. I note that a veterinarian in a previous review of this book said he saw his first "painted cat" recently, and he said that the cat had tried to lick off the paint and had ulcers on its tongue. This could be a jest also, but I suppose someone could have been taken in by the book too and actually tried to do one. Well, I hope most people realize the whole book is very likely an elaborate joke and don't try to paint anymore cats if it can be harmful to them, but the book as just a book of remarkable cat "paintings" is quite entertaining.
Rating:
Summary: Delightful send-up of the arts establishment
Review: This is really funny - on so many levels. Some of these cats are really gorgeous, some are funny, some are silly, some are bizarre.
But of course the best part of the book is the way it skewers some of the pretentions of the art establishment, adapting the jargon of the gallery world to this odd flight of fancy.
Love this: ". . . the cat's purple-colored tail becomes genitally implicated in what appears to be a quite unncircumscribed discussion of male assertiveness in the context of post-reunification Germany."
Or this: "This work is perhaps best understood in terms of Wittgenstein's concept of "seeing as", for unlike other peintures chat, Weiman's art is not based on any complacent liberalization that seeks to conceal the hunter-prey dichotomy."
Rating:
Summary: Funny and Edgy
Review: Warning: This book is not for people who take themselves (or anything else) too seriously. I love "Why Paint Cats." The photography and concepts are incredibly well executed and clever. The commentary and 'interviews' are the best part of the work, poking fun at everyone involved, especially art critics (fortunately). The authors have the stuffy self-importance of the critical world down perfectly, right down to the 'references', for example: "The artist's depiction of a green-eyed purple cat as a metaphor for monster...draws a clear parallel between the socially noxious effects of television and the environmentally destructive consequences of feline-avian conflict in the urban context," - D. Koplos, The Green-Eyed One-Tailed Spying Purple Parrot Eater. L.A. Art Times, 2001. The work is startlingly original and can be read on several levels. I heartily recommend it in every way.
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