• by Phyllis Fine , Staff Writer, March 15, 2006

Sometimes it's hard to be a cat person. Consider the horrors of hairballs, litterboxes--and gifts from those who assume that you'll love anything decorated with a feline image, no matter how cheesy. Over the years, I've received presents ranging from the god-awful (sappily sentimental porcelain cat figures) to the really cool (a pewter bracelet with finely detailed cat charms).

It's a mixed bag, the inventory of products that celebrate small, furry creatures that purr--not unlike the magazine Cat Fancy itself. There's cutesy-poo content and solid information--but definitely nothing as classy as, say, white gold, abstract cat design earrings from Tiffany's (which don't really exist, but a greedy gal can dream, can't she?)

The magazine's strongest selling point is visual. If you're in the mood for photos of cats looking wide-eyed and adorable--well, they're here, illustrating service features about kittens, the ragdoll breed of felines, and Kilkenny, Ireland, known as the "city of cats." A few illustrations, including an actually funny cartoon (a cat realizes just how good he's got it after he wakes up from a nightmare of being a dog and having to answer to orders of "fetch!") round out the appealing visual package.

The graphics are a step above the mag's writing style, which tends toward the bare-bones; articles sometimes read like encyclopedia entries ("According to the Humane Society of the United States, 6 to 8 million dogs and cats enter shelters each year."). I also found several careless errors, like this grammatical whopper: "Diagnosed with feline immunodeficiency virus and then cancer, Rosenberg..." Poor Rosenberg, to get a disease previously known only to afflict cats! And a description of a bed and breakfast for cats leaves out one essential fact--where is it located?

Still, Cat Fancy offers relevant, well-sourced information --vets and breeders are constantly quoted and even write several columns. Reading the March issue, I learned some practical as well as odd facts: there are actually asthmatic cats who may be allergic to humans; ragdoll cats are appealingly docile, will actually fetch, and don't mind baths--a good breed for the slightly feline-allergic like me; it's possible to leash-train a kitten; cat breeders sometimes promote inbreeding (otherwise known as kitty incest).

Yet this is mostly reference material that anyone should be able to get on the Web. The letters to the editor column ("Purrs & Hisses," of course--Cat Fancy's editors seemingly can't resist that feline wordplay), mentions past feature-oriented pieces that broadened the scope of the magazine, like "Dynamite Dating Tips For Cat Owners," and "Top 20 Felines On Screen." But in this issue, fact-based pieces are rounded out mostly by the columns that solicit reader entries, where the range (poems and drawings, including some from kids) is from cute to embarrassing.

Cat Fancy is a major pub for its category, attracting all the big pet product advertisers. I just wish it were a little more literate. Considering that there are many sophisticated cat owners--don't most novelists, for example, pose with their cats on book jackets?--there's definitely a market.

As I noticed when checking out pet books on the newsstand, a different demo has already gotten its quality journal--Bark. Just compare how the two mags cover singer and actress Doris Day, also an animal activist. Despite the Cat Fancy cover line, "Doris Day's Love Affair With Pets," the mag only devotes two paragraphs in the actual story to Day; the rest is a boring profile of Cypress Inn, a pet-friendly resort in Carmel, Calif. that Day owns. Meanwhile, in its January/February issue, Bark features a full conversation with Day, joined by fellow singer and animal rights activist Nellie McKay (the star of a new Broadway revival of "The Threepenny Opera").

I can't help being jealous of a mag that's reportedly been described as "The New Yorker of dog magazines." So where is the feline equivalent, our Meow to the dog-lover's Bark?