Meow the 42nd – Thou Shalt (Not) Judge a Book by Its Cover

When you go into a bookshop, you will see that books with cats on the cover are the in-thing. While cats on the cover may make you want to buy the book because you expect cat content, the cat on the outside might not automatically be a cat on the inside. Most of the time, though, what you see is what you get: a cat. Sometimes they are literary cats, sometimes they are non-fiction, and sometimes they are just a distant relative to the book’s content. So, judge the book by its cover and start reading.
Here is a selection of books found in bookstores in September 2015. Different books, different subjects, different cultures, but one thing is in common: a cat on the cover.
One of the literary kitties walking Waterstones bookstores is the Japanese guest cat Chibi. Chibi is a stray cat who wanders into the life and house of a Japanese couple and, thus, gives you a taste of Japanese culture.
The other fictional cats you come across in the bookstores are Hettie Bagshot and Tilly, the two proprietors of the No2 Feline Detective Agency. In a delightfully absurd blend of human characteristics taken over by cats, you are drawn into the world of Hetty and Tilly with catnip pipes and places like “Sheba Gardens” and “Whiskers Terrace”.
Fictional cats in a non-fiction book are the cats described in “The Well-Read Cat”, which is a wonderful collection of cats in manuscripts and books from the National Library of France. Various cats feature on the pages in this book.
The cat as a domestic animal appears in “Cat Sense”, which is a non-fictional description of the cat as a pet. Based on scientific sources, the book gives insights into cats and their behaviour.
In “The Net Delusion. How not to liberate the world”, the cat on the cover only has a distant connection to the discussion of internet freedom. The cover kitty has a more symbolic role to play: Rather than being used for serious information exchange, the internet turns out to be a play pen for cats. Though the book is not about cats, cats get their own chapter headline in “Orwell’s favorite LOL cat” and their very own internet phrase of “feline authoritarianism”.
The featured image: brewbooks, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Edith Podhovnik (November 2, 2015). Meow the 42nd – Thou Shalt (Not) Judge a Book by Its Cover. Meow Factor. Retrieved February 12, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/rdqe
this may be a bit off topic.. I meant to ask you: have you heard of the Nyanborads?
http://www.amiami.com/top/detail/detail?gcode=FIG-COL-9596
According to my former supervisor and play therapist (she is from Taiwan) this type of cat currently booms sales with kids and adults and is highly used in work. Originally it was a Dunboard, turned into a cat…
I have never seen them before. They are really cool. 🙂