FROM THE PUBLISHER

"Make us something about cats." This dictum, given to the artists and writers who participated in the 2003 Catholic exhibition at Guild & Greyshkul Gallery in New York, produced—beautiful, startling, thought-provoking, sweet, disturbing—results. According to editors/curators Jesse Pearson and Glynnis McDaris, "If they said 'cats are pretty,' that was fine. If they said 'cats are stupid,' that was fine too. This is Catholic in the spirit of its neglected definition: Having varied tastes. This isn't about eating fish on Fridays . . . .

The visual art in Catholic includes photographs by Roe Etheridge, Ryan McGinley, Colin DeLand, Richard Kern, Terence Koh, and Terry Richardson; drawings by artists Jim Drain, Sabrina Mansouri, Pieter Schoolwerth, and Spencer Sweeney; and projects from Le Tigre's JD Samson, Built-by-Wendy's Wendy Mullen, and United Bamboo. Cats also includes Steve Lafreniere's writing on his mother's cat photography, Amber Gayle on brushes with 300-pound mountain lions, Amy Kellner's diatribe on the "Hang in There, Baby" tradition, and a poem from Eileen Myles's pet, Avi.

There are people in this world whose love of cats reaches near-religious fervor. For those people, Catholic fills a market niche that magazines like Cat Fancy and Cat World never could, or maybe, never dared. —Patrik Ervell in V magazine

Catholic is cuddly and clever and purrs when you pet it. —Brittney Brown, Flaunt Magazine

Cat-holic is the kind of pun we'd hate ourselves for not using. —Jesse Pearson and Glynnis McDaris

Edited by Jesse Pearson and Glynnis McDaris.