Wonderful book, that gives you exactly what it says on the cover.
It contains photographs of wide range of people (and their cats) who have influenced the LGBTQ community, accompanied by a short bio of each person, what they mean to the community and how felines played a part in their lives: Great job on fitting so much info in such a short space, and still have it be comprehensive and to the point. Kudos to the writer/editor.

Jujubee and her beloved cat Priss look absolutely radiant in the cover photograph of this book. I can only imagine how difficult it must be to capture a shot like this, but if on point as it is here, it reveals a lot of the personality of both feline and owner.

In fact, a lot of the celebrity cat owners featured here (a lot of whom I had never heard of before) seem more relaxed in the presence of their furry friends, which adds a wonderfully disarming quality to many of the portraits.

Some are really old photographs, such as the sepia shot of Clifton Webb, while others are old in the sense that they show the cat owners at an impossibly young age (Elton John and George Michael spring to mind.) Others stretch the definition of ‘cat’, such as Ahohni at the Bronx Zoo with an orphaned big cat.

One of the cleverest pics is that of Sharon Needles and her careful positioning of a cat statue (there is a real pussy as well, no need to raise an eyebrow), while the severest shot is of Judith Butler, looking stern against a white staircase, with a cat positioned a few steps behind her – and looking even sterner, if that is possible.

My only complaint is that some of the portraits are clearly ‘snaps’, in the sense that there is little professionalism involved (where the poor cat has ‘green’ eye and appears to be a blob held rather gamely by their human, as if they will make a bolt for it at the slightest relaxation of the hold – which of course they will do. They are cats, after all.) Plus the fact that one can never have enough cat pics, so the limit of one per celebrity is a tad parsimonious.

Each photograph is accompanied by a brief essay elaborating on the human’s claim to fame and their connection to the feline world. The collection is certainly eclectic, ranging from trailblazing trans porn star and producer Buck Angel (love that name!) to Matthew Mitcham, Chaz Bono and Marlene Dietrich.

Despite the assertion in the introduction that the emergence of ‘cat men’ is challenging toxic masculinity, the majority of these photographs are of women. Not that this is any issue, of course, as the authors note:

Ultimately, the nonhuman animal world is not as binary as our human society’s gatekeepers would have us believe. Animals don’t about human social constructs like gender, and they don’t discriminate based on sexuality. Cats, in particular, expect to be revered and adored by all humans …

This was really great. I really enjoyed seeing all these queer icons and their cats. I think it'd make a nice coffee table book.

This book was so sweet and awesome! I "met" a whole bunch of new celebrities I didn't knew were queer or didn't knew at all, let alone knew were cat people. Some, like Freddy Mercury, were quite obvious, of course, but nontheless, this book provied a whole lot of new and awesome information.
It was nice to read and I enjoyed the pictures which had been included to the book.
A good book, I really liked it!
Free copy proived by Netgalley; thank you!

A delightful beautifully illustrated books all cats lovers will enjoy.. whether straight or queer, just the photograph of artists, writers, media starts and their cats made this book a wonderful work for me,

Thanks to NetGalley and Chronicle Books for this e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

This book was so adorable. When I saw Ju Ju on it WITH her cat I just HAD to read it! It was really informational and gave a list of queer people ranging from drag queens, writers, filmmakers, designers, activists and many more. There were quite a few people I didn't recognize and got to learn a lot about queer icons posing with cats.

This would make a great coffee table book. The pictures were stunning and the mini biographies were to the point. I feel this is an important to read through and dip your toe into some current queer icons/history...plus there's cats!

5/5

Probably it's because the culture differences, I didn't find many icons I know about.
But I love cats.
Should be a good killing-time entreatment kind of a book.

This was fine. Moderately entertaining, but the write-ups were very surface level and a lot of the cat connections were tenuous at best.

What a joy of a book! Went through it in no time, would make a great gift for so many people.

A mix of posed photos, portraits, snapshots, selfies, with just enough queer history in the mix.

May have found a typo or two, would like to know who to contact about that (if they want me to that is).

I really enjoyed this book, and love love LOVE the cover! This is a prefect gift book for the cat lover or pop culture lover. Some of the photographs are not the best, but they all kept me interested. Great layout and interesting studies of queer icons and their cats.

This is a wonderful book. It has beautiful photos, as well as interesting information about each subject. I especially love hearing about the special bond between the person and their beloved companion. And any book with one of my favorites, Jujubee, on the cover pretty much guarantees that I'll pick it up! Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing this ARC for review.

So stinking cute. First I love cats so I was mesmerized but also it was so cool to read about some famous influential backgrounds while seeing a personal side to them. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.