Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: This is the kind that makes up one strata of my cat photo collection. Happy people posing with their cats, and I have written about it at some length in previous posts. (Found here including A Girl and Her Cat, a title I seem to have used again – A Girl and Her Cat, and for the boys, Men and Cats.)

There is no date, but I am guessing that Mona and Boots are shown here in the 1940’s – based on her hair and clothes. Boots is exactly the kind of lovely fat (I will guess boy) cat that I like best – have a good look at that mug on this guy. People always seem at their best in a photo with a cat – it relaxes them and makes them less self-conscious. I am also a fan of photos with these snaggle-tooth edges that I remember from my early childhood.

It used to make me sad to see family photos scattered to the four winds, sitting in a box in a flea market. After all, I can’t rescue them all. (I’m sure I’ve mentioned that we live in a studio apartment which we have crammed all this – and more – into.) However, over time it is interesting to me that these photos have somehow transcended their original record of these folks (and cats) that had emotional meaning for someone.

Now these are images of interest in their own right, a representation of a specific time and place, seventy or more years ago now, Mona with her pleated skirt, ankle socks and carefully curled hair, standing in her lovely Anywhere USA neighborhood, and holding Boots who looks exactly like any number of friendly pudgy tuxedo cats today. While I will continue to bemoan what the loss of the family photo album means to our visual cultural history of record, at least my future self will not be sad to see boxes of unloved photos at the flea markets of the future. The images of today and tomorrow will largely float along some place in the electronic world of the internet, along with this post.