Christmas carols are joyful by nature, and most people would be hard-pressed to hate a fluffy kitten. It should be simple math, but in the case of Cat’s Meow Christmas, things just don’t add up. Carols are good, cats are good, and carols sung by cats are…not good. To put it lightly.

                Cat’s Meow Christmas is a compilation of familiar Christmas carols performed by “The Festive Felines”. In reality, there’s a guy behind a synthesizer somewhere knitting cat meows together to form songs, but it’s more festive to believe there really are cats in scarves recording CDs. As the title suggests, the singing is almost entirely meows, save for some high-pitched children in a few songs. Even without words, the carols are easily recognizable.

                I’ll admit, at first I was amused. Actually, I laughed until I cried because there’s a mind-bogglingly funny aspect to “cats” hitting high notes. Unfortunately, the charm doesn’t last more than a few songs. When the meows started sounding more desolate than festive, I had to give up. The CD comes in a cardboard case like the “freebies” that occasionally show up at department store sales, making me wonder if I should be buying it or waiting for someone to hand it to me as a tie-in gift.

                While there is no musical quality to symphonic meowing, Cat’s Meow Christmas is a quirky gift I can almost guarantee nobody else will have (mostly because you have to dig behind the Christmas ornaments at Wal-Mart to find it). It makes a cute gift for a cat owner or someone horrible you want to annoy. Cat’s Meow Christmas has an equally amusing and unmusical cousin, All I Woof for Christmas, a CD of (you probably guessed it) dogs barking carols.

                I give Cat’s Meow a B for effort and a C- for appeal. Quirkiness can’t overcome  impracticality.