Pam’s Pictorama Post: While my timing may miss the mark for Halloween this year, the subject matter in a sense is pure Pictorama. The cat in question showed up from an auction house on Halloween night, having been purchased at an online auction a few months ago. While most auction houses I have encountered actually get items to me very quickly (one called Everything but the House sends out their packages with startling efficiency seeming to arrive within days) clearly some are more pokey. I purchased two things recently, at different auctions, and they have slowly meandered in a few months later. They are both welcome additions and today we start with this kitty – the other is a rather great future post.

This fellow appealed to my black cat Halloween loving sensibility for obvious reasons, although I very rarely purchase contemporary items. I am occasionally persuaded and this cat entertained me. I will say, I won it at auction for next to nothing but they really socked me on postage. I actually rejected what they said the postage was going to be at first and figured if I lost the cat and the few dollars over it so be it. Oddly they came back with something more reasonable and here he is.

It is my intention to have him join another Halloween cat which has graced my office for many decades. I was working at the Met and I don’t remember how this couple knew that I collected black cat items, but they made a gift of it to me one day. Seems their son was a buyer working for Martha Stewart and was responsible for sourcing decorative items for the various holidays which would then be shown in the magazine and probably also sold under her brand. This cat had been a sample among the items he proposed and it was rejected. Somehow his parents saw it and grabbed it up for me.

It has always been my office black cat if you will. (For many years I also kept the Happy Life wind-up toy, below, in my office because it has a calming and cheering effect on me. I was known to wind it up for staffers under distress, especially while at the Museum. I wrote a post about this soothing toy here and you can see it’s a clip of it wound up as well.) There has been occasional conversation about the scary black cat when he was introduced at various offices and why I have him and I usually just tell the story of his acquisition. However, over time for those staffers who have seen me on zoom from home they have been treated to a small view into the mighty black cat collection and it makes more sense. No one at the animal hospital has asked and I assume that has something to do with being an animal hospital? Or are they just not surprised to find me guarded by a scary black cat.

Both of these cats are made with a plastic arched cat body which is covered in black “fur”. The smaller older one (or one from my office, who knows the age of the additional one) has more wiry legs and you can almost pose him but I have never pushed it. Overall, this new fellow bigger and sturdier. Part of me wonders if he had shown up rather than the other if he would have made the grade with Martha. He is better made, although clearly from the same sort of origin.

The new cat is more substantial in every way. Both have glass eyes and whiskers although both stand out a bit more on the new cat. The office cat has those sort of spindly claw paw toes which are arguably a bit more intimidating than the fluffy feet on the other and his tail is on a jauntier angle. However his red nose is a bit comical and makes him friendlier than the shiny black one on this cat. His ribbon has always struck me as at odds with his overall appearance and if the new guy sported one it is long gone.

Both have been endowed with differently ferociously toothy mouths. The smaller cat has more teeth and the new one has fewer but they really look like they mean business. The many hard whiskers stand up on either side of the gaping mouth complete with a bright red tongue.

This fellow is going to make his way to the office this week now that he has had his baptism by Pictorama post. Unlike my prior offices, I have somehow fallen short of actually decorating this one in a meaningful way. (A post about the black cat sheet music that decorated my office at Jazz can be found here.) My first office for the animal hospital had a terrible leak (think water pouring into pots on the desk and floor) and I refrained from subjecting any of my framed sheet music to it. We moved offices last January and the new office does seem pretty water proof yet somehow I have yet to attempt to brand it much as my own. Perhaps I should be more concerned with the image he projects to staff, yet to know me is to know my love of all black cats – just ask Blackie and Beau!