Credits=⌐ Judith Kamman Kliban - B. Kliban never set out to establish a career in cat cartooning. He spent years studying painting, design, and figure drawing - but his cunning pets had other plans for the talented artist. In the early 1970s, four "stripers" were hanging out with Kliban, demanding his attention, as cats are wont to do. At the time, he was working as a freelance cartoonist for Playboy magazine to supplement his income, and as he thought up ideas, he doodled; the subjects of his doodles were more often than not his cats. Kliban's editor at Playboy saw some of those drawings, and immediately asked permission to show them to a literary agent. Thus Cat was born to the world at large. The cartoon feline took the world by storm in a book called, oddly enough, CAT. We had known Felix before, and Krazy Kat, but they were anthropomorphic - almost humans in cat suits. Cat was pure cat, based on Kliban's own pets and exhibiting cat behavior in the extreme. What had started out as playful doodling turned Kliban into a famous cartoonist. But as with most overnight success stories, his was a long time in the making. Kliban started his career in New York, where he attended Pratt Institute and Cooper Union. In the mid-1950s, he traveled and painted in Europe for two years, and upon returning to the States mounted a motorcycle and rode to the West Coast, eventually settling north of San Francisco. There Kliban took odd jobs to support himself - working for the post office and drawing nude models at a place called Mr. Wonderful on Broadway in San Francisco. In his boredom he began making up cartoons and drawing them on cocktail napkins. When Playboy magazine advertised for contributions from cartoonists in 1962, Kliban sent off a bunch of his new creations. Playboy loved them, and published his cartoons continually for the next thirty years. CAT was published in 1975, to immediate success. Seven more books followed. Kliban's success with cat cartooning never abated; Cat's image appeared in calendars and on posters, magnets, beach towels, and greeting cards. Kliban's Cat had become classic humor. B. Kliban died in 1990, but he remains with us through his artwork. Cat continues to enchant and amuse audiences around the world - a perfect creation from Kliban's masterful hand.
