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Had a talk with my aunt Gertrude about cat photo books and she dropped some truth
So I was over at my aunt's house last weekend and she has this huge stack of cat coffee table books from the 80s and 90s. I told her I was into collecting them now and she asked if I ever look at the author bios and publisher info on the back cover. I said no I just flip through for the pictures. She showed me that a lot of these older books were printed by small local publishers or even self published by cat rescue groups. Now I check every book I buy for that little blurb. I found a 1988 book about barn cats in Vermont that was only 500 copies made. Does anyone else hunt down those obscure small press cat books or am I just going down a weird rabbit hole?
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angelacooper13d ago
Oh man, I mean it's cool and all but like... is it really that deep? I used to buy those old cat books at thrift stores for a dollar and honestly half of them were just blurry photos of someone's cat named Mittens printed on paper that smelled like an attic. I get the appeal I guess but I dunno if I'd call it the holy grail of feline ephemera or whatever. Maybe it's just me but I think people get a little carried away with the rarity angle sometimes.
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aaron19714d ago
Wait, are you telling me there's a whole world of obscure cat media out there with actual historical value and I've just been hoarding the same five "Cats of Instagram" compilations like a rube? That barn cat book sounds like the holy grail of feline ephemera, something you'd find buried in a time capsule next to a laserdisc of "The Secret of NIMH." Now I'm half-tempted to start hitting up estate sales just to find a 1987 photo book called "Mittens of the Midwest" with a print run smaller than a high school play.
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