Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: For a professional photo postcard, this one runs a bit dark and has a strange metallic glare on it that some old photos seem to get from poor developing – tired hypo? Kim has lightened it a bit for your viewing pleasure which does reduce this effect and makes it much more viewable. It is postally unused and the bottom reads, Direct to Consumer, Copyright, 1907 by  Louis N. Gishwiller. Almeda, Kansas. Quick research only serves to confirm Louis Gishwiller as a photographer in Almeda and that there seem to be prominent descendants who remained active in the life of Almeda subsequently.

At the same time I purchased this I was bidding on another, more homemade one, which I am guessing came from the same collection. Lost that one sorry to say; it would have been nice to keep them together.

This cow/milk/cat concept has long fascinated me. I guess it starts with someone squirting the cat square in the face with some milk straight from the udder and the cat liking it. Cats probably hang out because of the smell of milk anyway. Still, cats don’t especially like getting their face soaked so I figure they must really like the taste of the milk to stand for it.

We are now told that milk is not so good for cats and I have not put any out for a cat in years. However when I was a kid, I used to put a saucer of milk out for my cat Pumpkin nightly, from the time he was a little fellow. (I have written about this glorious orange tabby most recently here in Ahoy! Cats at Sea.) Pumpkin adored his saucer of milk and he would settle in and polish it off in one go, his enormous striped tail slowing waving back in forth in appreciation as he drank it down. Although Cookie and Blackie will not know the joys of a milk nightcap, it should be said that Pumpkin lived to be north of 18 years old it did not seem to harm him substantially in any way.