Paperbacks from Hell [N.F. - Literature, Art]

Eye of the Tiger

Imagine what it was like to be Nick Sharman. For three years he woke up every morning, checked the papers, and saw that no one had done it yet. He didn’t want to do it. He kept waiting for someone else to do it, because it was so damn obvious. Then one morning, three years after James Herbert had unleashed his Rats, Sharman picked up his pen and unleashed…The Cats.

Just as we’re predisposed to like dogs, most people consider cats far too lazy and irresponsible to engage in organized mayhem. Write a scene in which an army of cats descends on London, and most people will assume that at any moment they’ll lose interest and start rolling around in a sunbeam or chasing laser pointers. Kitties are just too cute and fluffy to be scary, and scenes of their soft paws poking under doors induce giggles rather than gasps. When a radio announcer is buried alive in an avalanche of mewling kittens, the immediate reaction is not one of horror but a soul-deep “awwwww…”

In fact, it’s the humans who look like the sadistic monsters in Cats Gone Wild books, saying things like, “So, the plan is to wait for the cats to show themselves and then go at them with flame throwers.” When the felines are finally burned alive with napalm and the survivors are machine-gunned, it feels like something of an overreaction, especially when we all know that a helicopter dangling a bit of string could have led them out of town just as efficiently.

But cats have an inherent nobility that dogs and rats lack, which is probably why humans feel better when we bring them down to our buffoonish level by dressing them in reindeer antlers for holiday cards. Ha-ha! Look at the covers of Night-Shriek and Satan’s Pets! The kitties are wearing wigs! Ha-ha-ha!

You’re not laughing. What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue? And your liver? And your face?

Before the internet, cats were sometimes considered less than cute. Credit 64