Cats now outnumber dogs in U.S. households, so we'd like to point out five new books, purr-fect gifts for any feline fancier. Men & Cats (Perigee Books, $15) is for those who love to watch Sex and the City with their animal companions. This trim hardcover expands on Marie-Eva Gatuingt and Alice Chaygneaud's popular blog Des Hommes et des Chatons, with b&w photos of cats juxtaposed on the opposite page with scantily clad hunks in the same pose. It's hard to choose which side to cuddle with first. Wildlife photographer Mitsuaki Iwago's oversized hardcover Cats & Lions (Chronicle, $24.95) has a similar layout, with contrasting images of domestic cats opposite lions in the wild.
Cat lovers outside the Big Apple can still delight in Felines of New York (Simon & Schuster, $14.95) by comedian Jim Tews, who has photographed and "interviewed" more than 100 New York kitties. (In fact, we like it so much we've reviewed it below.) One cat boasts about creating a new hook-up app for cats called Littr. Another says his biggest regret was "Not hiding better when I saw you walk in." Shake Cats (Harper Design, $17.99) is photographer and animal trainer Carli Davidson's follow-up to her successful Shake Dogs and Shake Puppies, where she captures more than 130 hilarious images of cats shaking their heads.
In Fat Cat Art: Famous Masterpieces Improved by a Ginger Cat with Attitude (Tarcher, $14.95), Russian artist Svetlana Petrova inserts her 22-pound cat, Zarathustra, into classic pieces of art. Amazingly, this is not done through Photoshop. Petrova impressively repaints and adds Zarathustra to more than 130 works of art, ranging from Botticelli and da Vinci to Hopper and Dali. Zarathustra offers pithy and illuminating background notes about each painting. --Kevin Howell, independent reviewer and marketing consultant