Dancing with Cats

Dancing with Cats
By Burton Silver and Heather Busch

When I first saw this book, I was utterly disgusted. Cats dancing with humans? Give me a break! You would never catch me dancing with my human. She thinks she dances, but in my view, she stumbles gracelessly all around the living room. I wouldn’t want to get too close to her — she might trip and fall on me. When I see her load up one of her cardio dance DVDs, I steer clear. But here’s a book that shows a variety of cats dancing with a selection of foolish-looking, gaudily costumed humans. (Much to my amazement, there’s even a Somali cat. But at least the Somali is wise enough to dance with a child, who won’t do as much damage if he makes a wrong step.) In addition to the big color photographs, there’s a bunch of snooty text that sounds like it’s coming out of the mouth of a dance critic with a particularly annoying attitude. The thought that this book might encourage whackos like my human to start cat dancing was pretty horrifying to me ’til I took a closer look at the photos. Then I realized that quite a few of these shots seemed to be fairly well executed Photoshop renditions. Plus I heard a rumor that Burton Silver is a humorist from New Zealand and not a dance critic. So maybe this book isn’t as serious as I suspected. Which just goes to show — you can fool a gullible human, but you can’t fool a cat!