How to Tell If Your Cat Is Plotting to Kill You is a 2012 collection of cat-themed comics by Matthew Inman from
his website, The Oatmeal (theoatmeal.com). It
features a large number of comics from the site, plus a few new ones.
At their best, Inman’s comics are offbeat, manic, vulgar,
and over the top, and under any circumstances, they aren’t for the easily
offended. On the whole, the comics collected here are quite enjoyable, if
perhaps not quite up to the level of funniness Inman has generated in the past.
Several comics are little more than whimsically put-together observations of
cat behavior. There are a couple of classics here, though, including “How to Pet
a Kitty” and “Cat VS Internet.”
The book itself is high quality, with thick, glossy pages,
and most of the comics are in color. This is a decent-sized book – 130 pages – but it’s an
extremely quick read, as many of the pages only feature one panel each. Half
the book (literally) is comprised of “The Bobcats” and “Cat VS Internet” – this
latter has been stretched out to 21 pages. Obviously, Inman has to adapt his
comics to the dimensions of the printed page, but caveat emptor.
Cat-loving Oatmeal fans should get plenty of mileage out of
this book; fans of only one or the other will probably get substantially less.
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