The cats of the Greek Islands are part of the region's character. This work contains Hans Silvester's photographs of these cats in all shapes, sizes and colours against the backdrop of Mediterranean landscapes.
Part photography, part armchair travel, and 100 percent feline worship, "Cats in the Sun" transports readers to the Greek islands, where cats rule the cobbled streets and rooftops and are as much a part of the landscape as the whitewashed buildings and azure sea.
Nothing spells decadence and tranquility like the silken luxury of a cat napping in the sun. Asleep in the Sun -- the third and most ravishing volume in Hans Silvester's best-selling photography series -- presents the feline denizens of Greece's Cydadic Islands engaging in their most highly refined activity. Stretched across a bright doorway, curled into a sun-baked corner, rolling lazily against one another, these languid animals glow in Silvester's masterful portraits.
The dazzling success of Cats in thc Sun--praised by the Atlantic Monthly as "the finest pictures of cats ever taken" --left readers eagerly anticipating acclaimed photographer Hans Silvester's next volume. This spring, Chronicle Books is delighted to publish The Mediterranean Cat, featuring all-new, intimate portraits of these endearing animals at home under the Aegean skies. The kittens in Silvester's first book have grown into adult cats, and the continuing rapport he had established with them years earlier is evident in this latest collection of magnificent, full-color photographs. Cat lovers, photography buffs, and armchair travelers will revel in The Mediterranean Cat, a light-hearted celebration of the streetwise felines who prowl, preen, and play amid the sun-dappled, whitewashed buildings of the fabulous Greek isles.
This is the definitive book on classical cats. The cat has played a significant role in history from the earliest times. Well known is its role in the religion and art of ancient Egypt, no less than its association with witchcraft in the Middle Ages. But when did the cat become a domestic companion and worker as well? There has been much debate about the position of the cat in ancient Greece and Rome. Artistic representations are sometimes ambiguous, and its role as a mouse-catcher seems often to have been carried out by weasels. Yet other evidence clearly suggests that the cat was as important to Greeks and Romans as it is to many modern people. This book is the first comprehensive survey of the evidence for cats in Greece and Rome, and of their functions and representations in art. Donald Engels draws on authors from Aesop to Aristotle; on vase-painting, inscriptions and the plastic arts; and on a thorough knowledge of zoology of the cat. He also sets the ancient evidence in the wider context of the Egyptian period that preceded it, as well as the views of the Church fathers who ushered antiquity into the Middle Ages.
There are no blue cats in Blue Cats, but there are a number of intriguing local cats living their lives in the blue and white milieu of Greek villages on the islands of Santorini, Rhodes and Antiparos, poised high over the waters of the Mediterranean Sea. This coherent series of 28 images begins with cats enclosed in small rectilinear spaces - a picket fence, a window ledge, a thicket of chairs, out to the whitewashed curved and sculpted walls and alleys of Greek villages, to the pillars, roofs and chimneys where they become part of the sky, perching at dizzying heights above the azure sea. The photoessay concludes with a sequence of three jumps - over a gate, off a wall, and finally, off the page. Laid out 'gallery style', the book is clean and spare. Shades of blue predominate, each image on its own page surrounded by white as if on the wall of a gallery. The lush colors, the humor, and the sense of huge expanse combine to give an uplifting sense of joy and warmth.
For fans of A Street Cat Named Bob and Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World, “this lovely, luminous story will warm your heart and make you laugh and want to share your life with a rescue cat” (Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, author of The Nine Emotional Lives of Cats). Alcoholic and depressed, Michael King lives on the streets of Portland, Oregon, and sleeps in a UPS loading bay. One raining night, he stumbles upon a hurt, starving, scruffy cat cowering beneath a café table and takes her in. He names her Tabor, nurses her back to health, and she becomes something of a celebrity in Southeast Portland. When winter comes, they travel from Oregon to the beaches of California to the high plains of Montana, surviving blizzards, bears, angry steers, and rainstorms. Along the way, people are drawn to the spirited, beautiful cat and are moved to help Michael, who cuts a striking figure with Tabor riding high on his backpack or walking on a leash. Tabor comforts Michael when he’s down, giving him someone to love and care for, and inspiring him to get sober and to come to terms with his past family traumas and grief over the death of his life partner. As they make their way along the West Coast, the pair become inseparable, healing the scars of each other’s troubled pasts. When Michael takes Tabor to a veterinarian in Montana, he discovers that Tabor has an identification chip and an owner in Portland who has never given up hope of finding his beloved cat. Michael is faced with the difficult choice of keeping Tabor or returning her to her rightful owner—and, once again, facing the streets alone.
"The finest pictures ever taken of cats," says The Atlantic Monthly of Hans Silvester's photographs of Greek cats languorously stretched along whitewashed walls and sun-drenched pathways. The Complete Cats in the Sun is the essential Hans Silvester: together in one book are all the free-spirited felines from the enormously popular Cats in the Sun, Asleep in the Sun, and The Mediterranean Cat. This is a beautiful one-volume collection of those memorable cats leaping from one fishing boat to the next, prowling across the rounded azure rooftops in search of the perfect place for a quick nap in the sun, or slinking through the cool shadows of a Mediterranean afternoon. The Complete Cats in the Sun is destined to become the classic gift book for lovers of felines, the sun, and the magic that is the Grecian Isles.
At long last, an address book is available featuring highlights from Hans Silvester's "Cats in the Sun" series. Whether stretching languidly in the radiant Mediterranean sunshine or bounding gracefully across the colorful rooftops, these cats know how to make the most of life on the Greek isles.