Cats of The Times

You thought cats on YouTube did crazy things? You haven’t seen anything yet. In “Cats: From the Archives of The New York Times,” read about felines that talked, slept upside down, disrupted operas, saved ships, adopted rats, hatched eggs and walked hundreds of miles home. The most remarkable cats, as reported in the pages of The Times, are presented in this 140-page book along with historical photographs and color illustrations.

A dog might be man’s best friend, but cats were a newspaper’s favorite subject in the 1800s and early 1900s. Articles about cats with peculiar habits, strange powers and extraordinary achievements appeared on a regular basis in The Times. Many were funny, some were poignant and all were proof that fact is stranger than fiction.

Through articles from 1854 to 1964, this book brings you cats that walked upright on two legs, battled soda machines, befriended birds, fought snakes, rode trains, solved crimes, predicted the future and made telephone calls. These exploits and many more — did we mention flying felines and refrigerator cats? — come to life in this book right up the alley of cat lovers.

This is the second edition of “Cats of The Times,” with a new cover and new design, and now 50 black-and-white photos, five new full-page illustrations and an introduction by Sarah Lyall, a writer at large at The Times. Photographs in this book are from The New York Times “morgue” – the basement repository in Times Square where six million pictures are stored. To maintain the historical integrity of the images, the cover photograph is reprinted in its original hard-copy condition, showing cropping indicators, reference numbers and airbrushing by retouchers to highlight specific areas.