Cats & Dogs is the third studio album released by Mental As Anything. It was released in September 1981, produced by Bruce Brown and Russell Dunlop, and peaked at #3 and #2 on the Australian, and New ZealandAlbum charts, respectively. The first single, "If You Leave Me, Can I Come Too?", written by Martin Plaza was released in May 1981 and peaked at #4 on the Australian Singles charts. The next single, "Too Many Times", written by Andrew Smith and released in September 1981 reached #6, whilst the third single, "Berserk Warriors", which was released in December 1981, only peaked at #30. Cats & Dogs was released overseas in New Zealand, and with an altered track listing in both Canada, and the USA and Europe.
Recording
Greedy Smith claimed this was their first "proper" album: "With the first one, we didn't know what we wanted or what we should sound like, and the second one just got away from us all together. This time, we put our foot down with the record company and said we wanted more time. We were able to put tracks down, then leave them and think about them."
Reception
In October 2010, Cats & Dogs was listed in the top 50 in the book, 100 Best Australian Albums having previously been listed in similar polls in the music magazines Rolling Stone, Juice and The Edge. AllMusic said, "the Mentals created their first true 'classic' album, which takes the best elements from their debut album and betters them by leaps and bounds. Everyone in the band shines on this album, from Martin Plaza's warm drawl to Reg Mombassa's amazing slide fretwork and Greedy Smith's confident and playful keyboards." Rip It Up agreed the album was, "generally acknowledged as the Mentals' most accomplished album, where their diverse ideas came together consistently."
Track listing
Australian & New Zealand Editions
Canadian edition
The Canadian edition of Cats & Dogs dropped the album's final five tracks, and added two earlier singles
USA edition
The American edition of Cats & Dogs, re-titled If You Leave Me, Can I Come Too?, dropped four tracks, and added "The Nips Are Getting Bigger", "Egypt", and the newly recorded single "I Didn't Mean to Be Mean".
UK and European edition
The UK and European edition of Cats & Dogs was resequenced, remixed and re-titled If You Leave Me, Can I Come Too?. It included all tracks from the Australian edition, and added "I Didn't Mean to Be Mean". All the tracks were remixed by Dunlop and Brown, in some cases resulting in significantly different timings from the tracks on the original Australian/NZ release. Also note that the version of "I Didn't Mean to Be Mean" included on this album uses a different vocal take than the Australian single mix.
