Jane the Ignorant Slut is a 17-year-old black cat with a bum leg.
She's coughed up hairballs in ten states, and claims she learned to speak
German during her exile to the katze spa in Bad Homburg. Her latest hobby
is dragging lizards in from the garden and leaving them for us under the
dining room table. Now she wants on the Internet. I should have seen it
coming. Santa brought her Internet for Cats, a new book by Judy
Heim (No Starch Press, 1996, ISBN 1-886411-07-7, $8.95; there were a bunch
of them on the shelf at the new Barnes and Noble at IH-10 and DeZavala.)
She let me read it.
If I didn't know better I'd think the author was spying on Jane batting the escape key or poking her paw into into the B drive looking for kitty kibble. This woman knows cats, and is very, very funny. She takes you on a tour of all of the feline sites on the Internet, and in the process even human companions will learn about e-mail, web sites and FAQs. There's an entire cult of cat lovers out there, and they have designed their own shorthand to describe their furry pals. There are cat newsgroups, cat mailing lists, cat FAQs, cat magazines, cat shopping malls and even an online Net Vet. Cats from Tennessee to Timbuktu have their own web pages. There are a few sites listed that are of special interest to cats the Amazing Fish Cam, the Rainforest Birds Site and a game for cats, called Hairball. Cats have their own emoticons. The Internet is lousy with cats.
If you have a cat or just like to laugh at them, throw this one in the
basket along with the kitty litter and the case of Friskies. Judy Heim,
a columnist for PC World, has her own home page where you can read some
excerpts and look at some of the super illustrations by Alan Okamoto. Reach
it at http://execpc.com/~judyheim/internet4cats.html.