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In his introduction to this sagebrush valedictory, Novelist Thomas McGuane catalogues the hallmarks of the fading West: "The dead windmills lost behind the high wire of a missile range, the stove-up old cowboy at the unemployment of fice, the interstate that plunges through the homesteads . . ." Threatened by land development and automated meat production, folks less durable than cowpunchers would have ridden into the sunset long ago. Yet they hang on, as evidenced by Vanishing Breed (New York Graphic Society; 144 pages; $29.95). More than 100 evocative photographs catch ranch hands and horses in landscapes where the Old West and the new one jostle for position: an AM-FM portable rests on a chuck wagon; pickup trucks wait outside wilderness taverns; mud-and blood-spattered rodeo riders hanker after Stetsoned girls who put Vaseline on their teeth to enhance their smiles. William Albert Allard's pictures catch it all, with a unique mixture of regard and regret.

Drawing on materials at hand, doll-makers of the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries fashioned humble toys from wood scraps, nuts, cornhusks, leather, even wishbones and wax. Wendy Lavitt has culled choice examples in American Folk Dolls (Knopf; 133 pages; $14.95 paperback) from museum and private collections, including her own. Among the finds: a simple cloth child in a beautifully detailed gown, the product of someone's exquisite needlework; an Indian doll caught between two cultures, dressed in buckskin, but with a nun's veil; Eskimos in sealskin, their curved ivory faces true to tribal doll convention: smiles for the boys, frowns for the girls. These miniatures are more than mere playthings. Black dolls of the South were owned by the children of slaves; after the Civil War, dolls were made with new identities: ministers, teachers, fashionable gentlefolk. "If only the dolls themselves could speak!" muses Lavitt. In a way they do, and what they have to say is history.

In China, 1982 will be remembered as the year of the dog and in the U.S. as the epoch of the cat. Ronald Searle's Big Fat Cat Book (Little, Brown; $12.95) may seem a late entry. In fact, the English satirist has been cartooning cats for decades, mocking their uncivilized sophistication, their hypocrisy and cunning. While some of his furry vamps are overarch (Lady Catterley, Catahari), the vast majority of his scenes and creatures are instances of energy and wit. After examining the ferocious splashes of color in "Rat Race" or the haunting perspectives of "Displaced Persons," cat owners will never again feel quite so indulgent or annoyed with their demanding pets. The cats, however, will not change a hair. As Searle's futuristic comedy indicates, for the rest of the century ailurophiles will be making beelines for the felines.

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