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Andy Warhol untitled lithograph from his 1954 book entitled Holy Cats. Photolithograph on green colored paper from Warhol's privately printed book of ink blotted line drawings and calligraphic text written by his mother, Julia Warhola. Self-printed in New York. Issued unsigned.

Having begun his career as a commercial illustrator, it is no surprise that Andy Warhol chose to depict mainstream images in his artwork. Working in the Pop Art style, Warhol infused bright and obscure colors to bring his symbolic images to life. Often creating his artwork based around a central figure, often a celebrity or recognizable image of every day use, in a variety of juxtaposed positions in a barrage of luminescent colors.

Mrs. Warhola, very protective of her son, moved from Pittsburgh to cook for him and take care of his many stray cats as he struggled to make it in the competitive New York advertising world. She was born in Poland and barely spoke any English. Andy liked her handwriting and asked her to write out the text for Holy Cats as well as Warhol's previous 1954 book 25 Cats Named Sam and One Blue Pussy. He was delighted by the charming mistakes and random spelling errors his mother made as a non-English speaker.

Since Warhol's retrospective in 2002 at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) which included, for the first time, numerous drawings and paintings from the 40s and 50s, there has been renewed interest in this early work, which pre-dates the invention of pop art. Single unsigned sheets from the book 25 Cats Named Sam and One Blue Pussy, which are hand-colored are now fetching between $20,000 - $25,000 per sheet at auction, however Holy Cats from the same year is still undiscovered by a wider group of collectors and is still very affordable. This hand printed lithograph on green colored paper showcases a friendly cat wearing a feathering and flowering hat with the text that reads, _Some Play with Themselves_. Using the monochromatic tone of black ink, Warhol enhances the fun and frivolity of the piece while rendering the feline in quick and loose line strokes.