Living: A Comeuppance for Cats

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Why, all of a sudden, should sick cat jokes prove so appealing? For one thing, since the triumph of Poland's Solidarity union movement, Polish jokes are out. For another, many people are being made aware of long-hidden resentment of the pampered pets and their golden-eyed contempt toward the humans privileged to support them. Pop Psychologist Joyce Brothers regards ailurophobia, at least in its literary form, as a harmless put-on. "If you get upset at this," she says, "you have too much emotional involvement in your pet." Harvey Mindess, an authority on the psychology of humor, sniffs: "101 Uses proves that there are a lot of ten-year-olds in the buying public." Mindess speculates that Simon Bond was probably once "rejected by a voluptuous Siamese."

All this may only be the beginning. Bond's publisher received an approving letter from an organization on the Arabian gulf known as the Bahrain Dead Cat Society (slogan: FELIX MORTE). The society's letterhead notes that it is affiliated with the North American Dead Dog Society, the Kenyan Institute for Crushed Aardvarks and the Fiji Squashed Squid Squad.