The painted cats are in a book called "Why Paint Cats," by the same people who brought us "Why Cats Paint."

I got the e-mail of them from a couple of different people. The e-mails said something along the line that the custom paint jobs cost some $15,000 each and had to be redone every 3 months. I have both of the books, but I didn't see anything about $15,000 paint jobs. I thought the painted cats were done by someone who had a lot of time to spend playing with Photoshop.

In fact, I just got out my copy of the book, and I still can't find the $15,000 explanation. Actually, most of the writing in the book (in both books, in fact) is rather tongue-in-cheek. I still go with the Photoshop explanation.

You can read all about it at http://www.snopes.com/photos/arts/paintedcats.asp.

Pat