There's A Book Full Of Photos Of Kitties High On Catnip

Catnip is a hell of a drug, and there’s now a coffee table book to prove it

Anyone who’s owned a cat prone to addiction knows the kind of havoc some good catnip can wreak. The dilated pupils. The puffed out tails. The erratic meowing and movements. Cats on catnip are hilarious. And now you can laugh at them all day long with a coffee table book full of photos of cats who are stoned out of their minds.

Photographer Andrew Marttila first started posting photos of his roommate’s “high” cat to Instagram, where he operates under the handle, @iamthecatphotographer. Those posts were super popular, so he sought out other cats to load up with the ‘nip and photograph. There series continued to evolve until Marttila had so many photos, he compiled them into a 128-page coffee table book.

“I started taking these photos around three or four years ago,” Marttila tells Scary Mommy. “It was never a series or anything – just whenever the mood struck me I’d try to take a few shots of him on the green stuff.”

“This continued sporadically until it dawned on me that they could eventually make a hilarious series, but with a variety of cats. After my first book, Shop Cats of New York, I was kicking around ideas and Cats on Catnip came out the clear winner for my next project. I figured it would be a hit given the way my audience responded to the sneak peeks, but didn’t expect it to be so widely well received. I think these photos resonate with everyone, not just cat owners.”

He’s not wrong. These photos are objectively hilarious, and Marttila knows why.

“I think what I love most is showing an extremely silly and playful side to creatures that are normally incredibly graceful,” he says. “It’s also really rewarding as a photographer to be able to capture things that we wouldn’t normally see with the naked eye. You never know what you’re going to get when you’re taking these kinds of shots, so it was a ton of fun for me to look through the photos afterward and pick out the gems.”

Seriously, every photo is better than the last. Marttila explained that he has an excess of cats in his life because he and his partner take in orphaned kittens. That’s pretty much the perfect back story for a project like this.

“As far as the other ones go, I put out a call to my close friends on social media and had more than enough responses to round out the series,” he says.

In conclusion, if you are a fan of cats, laughing, or laughing at cats, you owe it to yourself to get a copy of this book. It’ll be the best thing you’ve ever had on your coffee table — except, of course, your cat and (hopefully) a big pile of catnip.