a cat-exploiting novelty book written by burton silver and heather busch, and somewhat of a sequel to their best-selling Why Cats Paint. say the authors: "It turns out that thousands of people today are rediscovering the ancient practice of cat dancing, tapping into this remarkable method of channeling feline energy." riiiight. ancient practice? show me the hieroglyphs.

so would you believe there's also a calendar? i own it. and it's the only calendar i've ever owned that's given me entirely mixed feelings.

each month there's a picture of cats performing some sort of acrobatic dance move. most of the time humans are mimicking the cats (what, do you really think it's the other way around?), performing similar feats. there are a couple of cute ones, like the old man who's apparently trying to catch the cats in midair (sort of like a lift, i suppose)... or like the kid who (i'm sorry to say) appears to be a poster child for the dana farber cancer institute, who's high-fiving an orange tiger-stripe. but then, if you are positively certain that cats don't really dance at all, you start to wonder... what were they really doing?

some of the cats, to be honest, look like they were thrown. or at least dropped. you can see a definite twisting of the body and an "oh shit" look in some of these pictures. that bothers me. at the very least, i assume they were scared off of tables or relatively high perches, because they're always leaping DOWN, and they don't look too happy about it.

on the back of the calendar is written: "no cats were harmed during the production of this calendar." it should reassure me, but it doesn't.