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101 More Uses for a Dead Cat
The controversial cartoonist's unique drawings illustrate, with morbid glee, additional ways in which dead cats may be put to practical use
95 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1982
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33 people want to read
About the author
Simon Bond
40 books2 followersFrom the "Guardian" obtiuary:
Simon Patrick Everett Bond was born of British parents on 19 August 1947 in New York City. He was the second son of Terence Bond, a political secretary at the United Nations, and Hilda Everett. The family returned to England when he was four. In London, he attended Preston Manor County Grammar School, Wembley, before studying graphics at West Sussex College of Art and Design in Worthing (1965–68). His first job was as a paste-up artist on Tatler magazine (1969–70) before returning to the US on health grounds.
For more than a decade he lived in Phoenix, Arizona, where the climate was better suited to his chronic asthma. He then worked in a variety of jobs, including dealing in antiquarian prints and pictures and performing stand-up comedy in clubs while also contributing cartoons to the Saturday Evening Post, Esquire, National Lampoon, New Yorker, Men Only and Vole.
In 1976 he published his first book, Real Funny (1976), and soon afterwards mentioned the idea for a macabre cartoon book about dead cats to his friend, Terry Jones of Monty Python, who he had met in London. Jones liked the idea and recommended it to the British publisher Methuen, who published it as 101 Uses of a Dead Cat (1981). The book was an instant and enduring success, eventually selling more than two million copies and being published in 20 countries. Despite frequent attacks by cat lovers (Time magazine called him "the Charles Addams of ailurophobia"), Bond always maintained that he meant no harm by the book and was not only fond of cats but had even owned four himself at various times (as well as a dog); the only problem was that he was allergic to them.
At first he had no plans for a follow-up cat book and concentrated on a screenplay, Shorts, satirising the media, and another cartoon collection for Methuen, Unspeakable Acts (1982). However, in 1982 he returned to London, began contributing to Punch and Private Eye, and produced a new cat collection, 101 More Uses of a Dead Cat (1982) with tie-in calendars appearing in 1983 and 1984.
In 1985 he married Linda Marshall, and moved to the Jacobean Great Addington Manor near Kettering in Northamptonshire. Here he continued to produce at least one cartoon book a year, including Uses of a Dead Cat in History (1992). In 2001, to mark the 20th anniversary of the first book, Methuen published Complete Uses of a Dead Cat (2001), incorporating all three volumes. In 1993 Bond and his wife moved to Langer, Nottingham.
In all he published more than 20 collections of drawings, including Odd Visions and Bizarre Sights (1983), Uniformity (1986), A Bruise of Bouncers (1987), Battered Lawyers and Other Good Ideas (1989), Odd Dogs (1989), Holy Unacceptable (1990), Commuted to Life (1992), Everybody's Doing It (1993) and three children's books featuring the teddy bear Tough Ted. He also illustrated two books by Alan Abel, Don't Get Mad, Get Even! A Manual for Retaliation (1983) and How to Thrive on Rejection: A Manual for Survival (1985), as well as Percy Richer's Richer's Legal Nuggets (1987) and Tom Isitt's Secrets of the Queen's Closet (1988). His last published book was 101 Uses of a Dead Roach (2002) with an "epitaph" by the celebrity drug-dealer Howard "Mr Nice" Marks.
Bond, who once said that he loved thinking up ideas but truly hated drawing, usually sketched his cartoons with a 2H pencil on A4 cartridge paper, working up the finished drawing with a fine Edding needlepoint nylon-tip pen. However, for his bookwork he tended to draw actual size. He never used washes, tints or cross-hatching, preferring to draw up-and-down lines for shadows. For colour work he preferred coloured pencils.
Below average height, he spoke with a soft English accent and usually wore spectacles. He was a keen collector of antiques and was also very interested in sport, especially cricket and football (Nottingham Forest FC).
Simon Patrick Everett Bond was born of British parents on 19 August 1947 in New York City. He was the second son of Terence Bond, a political secretary at the United Nations, and Hilda Everett. The family returned to England when he was four. In London, he attended Preston Manor County Grammar School, Wembley, before studying graphics at West Sussex College of Art and Design in Worthing (1965–68). His first job was as a paste-up artist on Tatler magazine (1969–70) before returning to the US on health grounds.
For more than a decade he lived in Phoenix, Arizona, where the climate was better suited to his chronic asthma. He then worked in a variety of jobs, including dealing in antiquarian prints and pictures and performing stand-up comedy in clubs while also contributing cartoons to the Saturday Evening Post, Esquire, National Lampoon, New Yorker, Men Only and Vole.
In 1976 he published his first book, Real Funny (1976), and soon afterwards mentioned the idea for a macabre cartoon book about dead cats to his friend, Terry Jones of Monty Python, who he had met in London. Jones liked the idea and recommended it to the British publisher Methuen, who published it as 101 Uses of a Dead Cat (1981). The book was an instant and enduring success, eventually selling more than two million copies and being published in 20 countries. Despite frequent attacks by cat lovers (Time magazine called him "the Charles Addams of ailurophobia"), Bond always maintained that he meant no harm by the book and was not only fond of cats but had even owned four himself at various times (as well as a dog); the only problem was that he was allergic to them.
At first he had no plans for a follow-up cat book and concentrated on a screenplay, Shorts, satirising the media, and another cartoon collection for Methuen, Unspeakable Acts (1982). However, in 1982 he returned to London, began contributing to Punch and Private Eye, and produced a new cat collection, 101 More Uses of a Dead Cat (1982) with tie-in calendars appearing in 1983 and 1984.
In 1985 he married Linda Marshall, and moved to the Jacobean Great Addington Manor near Kettering in Northamptonshire. Here he continued to produce at least one cartoon book a year, including Uses of a Dead Cat in History (1992). In 2001, to mark the 20th anniversary of the first book, Methuen published Complete Uses of a Dead Cat (2001), incorporating all three volumes. In 1993 Bond and his wife moved to Langer, Nottingham.
In all he published more than 20 collections of drawings, including Odd Visions and Bizarre Sights (1983), Uniformity (1986), A Bruise of Bouncers (1987), Battered Lawyers and Other Good Ideas (1989), Odd Dogs (1989), Holy Unacceptable (1990), Commuted to Life (1992), Everybody's Doing It (1993) and three children's books featuring the teddy bear Tough Ted. He also illustrated two books by Alan Abel, Don't Get Mad, Get Even! A Manual for Retaliation (1983) and How to Thrive on Rejection: A Manual for Survival (1985), as well as Percy Richer's Richer's Legal Nuggets (1987) and Tom Isitt's Secrets of the Queen's Closet (1988). His last published book was 101 Uses of a Dead Roach (2002) with an "epitaph" by the celebrity drug-dealer Howard "Mr Nice" Marks.
Bond, who once said that he loved thinking up ideas but truly hated drawing, usually sketched his cartoons with a 2H pencil on A4 cartridge paper, working up the finished drawing with a fine Edding needlepoint nylon-tip pen. However, for his bookwork he tended to draw actual size. He never used washes, tints or cross-hatching, preferring to draw up-and-down lines for shadows. For colour work he preferred coloured pencils.
Below average height, he spoke with a soft English accent and usually wore spectacles. He was a keen collector of antiques and was also very interested in sport, especially cricket and football (Nottingham Forest FC).
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
October 12, 2020
Content Warning: Bad, bad things happening to cute, cuddly kitties.
Perhaps the closest analogue I've read to 101 More Uses for a Dead Cat is Andy Riley's The Book of Bunny Suicides. Like The Book of Bunny Suicides (and its sequels), 101 More Uses for a Dead Cat (and its predecessor and successor volumes) is essentially one rather morbid joke told, well, 101 different ways. If Simon Bond had shown the actual killing of the cats, particularly someone killing the cats, this book would be thoroughly grotesque, and decidedly serial killer-y; as it is, 101 More Uses for a Dead Cat is simply sick, at least passively so. People with sensitivity towards this or related subject matter quite understandably may not at all enjoy 101 More Uses for a Dead Cat (hence the above Content Warning)—and I myself, as a cat person, can only Take So Much of this sort of thing—but if taken with a grain of salt, this book is at least tolerable, if not actively enjoyable. No, I have no desire to check out any of Bond's other "Dead Cat" cartoons (or even The Cat's Revenge: More Than 101 Uses for Dead People, a response by Philip Lief)—because, in part as I said already, this book constitutes exactly one joke, much as I also had no desire to check out Riley's "Bunny Suicides" sequels—but for a one-off type of book, 101 More Uses for a Dead Cat is certainly amusing.
June 25, 2025
el weoncito menos cagado de la cabeza. literal puedes dejar pasar unos dibujos porque simplemente son estupidos, como el de cepillo de dientes, pero otros son realmente para cagados de la cabeza, hay uno donde el cadáver del gato es usado como muñeca sexual, y todos estos weoncitos en los reviews diciendo que es "silly, not violent" LOOOOL
Incluso si te gustara esto, realmente que es FOME
Incluso si te gustara esto, realmente que es FOME
January 16, 2025
I've just been reminded of this book which my grandmother had at her house and I read as a teen (I think? No idea when I actually read it) when visiting. Some of those illustrations are so wrong! I do recall getting one of those "eww" laughs out of it, though... So horrified it was funny?
March 14, 2022
Pari ihan nokkelaa oivallusta, mutta aikalailla meh-osastoa.
June 22, 2025
Absolutely disgusting and sick. How someone could enjoy this is beyond me. I saw it at a thrift store and bought it just so no one else would see it. It may sound wrong to some but not to me.
October 15, 2021
The book has some creativity that is supposed to be funny, but I couldn't laugh as it is supposed to make the reader. Perhaps this is because I couldn't but be reminded of my beloved cat that passed away 3 months ago or maybe I just love cats so much. Maybe if the book had a different title like "101 Useful Uses for a Cat" it would have been funnier.
July 8, 2014
Don't get me wrong, I will cry at least a river over the death of a beloved pet. I'm very attached to my cats, and sadly more likely to accommodate them than the human members of the household. Nonetheless, perhaps, because of, I laugh hard at these cartoons.
Read
August 23, 2008isbn,original
July 7, 2010
Deffiently one of the original spin-offs of suicide bunnies except these cats were already dead. Haha.
December 26, 2012
quick, morbid and silly :)
December 10, 2022
A fun and whimsical read but it would be better if a cat with 100 uses was alive rather than dead!
September 18, 2022
Not my type
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews