People, let me tell you a legend. The year was 1988. Everything in the world seemed great, until something came along that made it perfect. That thing was: animal-themed parodies of fashion magazines. I knew them and I owned them.

What, exactly, are animal-themed parodies of fashion magazines, you ask? Oh, just a little thing called Vanity Fur. Or, for the modern gal, Catmopolitan. Or, for the fashion-oriented dog-loving woman, Dogue. Or, for the man in the know, CQ (Canine Quarterly). Or, for people who loved teddy bears dressed up in lingerie, Harper's Bear-zaar.

I enjoyed these magazines, as a youngster, because they had all the glamor of real fashion magazines (including parodies of the ads, such as the Blackglama ones, and to this day I have a hard time wrapping my head around the phrase "What becomes a Legend most?" What?) but instead of boring humans, animals! There were also articles titled things like "The Fur Is Flying," featuring Christian LaClaw and Yves Saint Bernard "fighting like cats and dogs to lead the fashion pack." (These totally went over my head but they featured stuff like animals wearing hats and glasses. What else could you want?

I completely forgot about these magazines until yesterday when, on Facebook, I noted that we have inexplicably begun receiving Cat Fancy at my house and my friend Lauren admitted to reading Catmopolitan as a girl, along with various and sundry real animal magazines (she had a horse; she had it all). Then the memories came flooding back to me, and I realize, for the first time, how a.) weird it is that these magazines were made, and b.) that I owned them.

I was so excited to learn that I was not the only person who got to enjoy the heady, heady times of animal-themed parodies of fashion magazines. This made me wonder: how widespread indeed were these publications? If you enjoyed them, or knew of any others that existed, please let me know, and your fondest memory of them.