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THE ILLUSTRATED CAT by Jean-Claude Suarès and Seymour Chwast. 72 pages. Harmony Books/Crown. $10.95, hardcover; $5.95, paperback. A fetching concatenation of feline portraits done by celebrated painters, illustrators and cartoonists from Watteau, Manet, Renoir and Picasso to Andrew Wyeth, from Tenniel to Thurber, from Chessie in the C & O berth to Krazy Kat beset by Ignatz Mouse. The text is too kittenish, even for ailurophiles, but the pictures are, well, magnificat.
ALLIGATORS AND MUSIC by Donald Elliott. Illustrated by Clinton Arrowood. 67 pages. Gambit. $8.95. Anyone who thinks of alligators as truculent beasts can thank Clinton Arrowood for revealing their spiritual side: they are dedicated musicians. There is no indication of this in Donald Elliott's didactic text, a series of short essays in which the instruments of the orchestra archly explain their characteristics. Thus the bassoon: "I am something of a deep thinker." Somehow, this unpromising libretto inspired Arrowood to portray each instrument being performed by one of his bewigged and frock-coated reptiles. The results are as absurd—and as charming—as Babar the elephant enjoying the Comédie Françhise.
THE HIGHER ANIMALS: A MARK TWAIN BESTIARY. Edited by Maxwell Geismar. Drawings by Jean-Claude Suarès. 160 pages. Thomas Y. Crowell. $8.95. Fully half a century ago, Robert Benchley protested against the practice of concocting an annual anthology of Mark Twain relics. That season's offering happened to be Moments with Mark Twain, so Benchley wondered whether "we may look for further books in this series in 1923, 1924, 1925, etc., to be entitled Half-Hours with Mark Twain ... Pleasant Week-Ends with Mark Twain, Indian Summer with Mark Twain. " Mutatis mutandis, this year's Twain anthology is a collection of his tales and observations about animals, ranging from the familiar Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County to such oddities as a polemic against the inefficiency of ants. Twain is a master always worth rereading, and perhaps the chief justification for new anthologies is to remind us of lines like "A jay hasn't got any more principle than a Congressman."