Pam’s Pictorama Post: Today I have cat tales. Cats are of course the foundational interest of Pam’s Pictorama although we do stray – Kim’s comics, the occasional dog. We are All Pam, all the Time, but albeit not quite cats all the time but much of the time.

Today’s card came as a purchase from the most recent incarnation of the postcard show and we have the Boulanger card with crying kitties to consider. I’m not exactly sure what in particular Maurice was thinking about. We have a dark gray and white matched pair of kittens who are looking at each other with tears running down their faces. The white one is a bit pudgier and a smidge bigger than the gray one, one with yellow eyes and the other a very light green.

In my opinion Boulanger (b. 1910, d.o.d. unknown) was something of a pretending to the Louis Wain (b. 1860, d.o.d. 1939) throne so to speak, as there are a few decades of overlap between them. I reckon there was more than enough demand for the images produced by two cat artists. (Some prior posts for Boulanger can be found here and here. Louis Wain Pictorama posts abound but a few are here and here.)

This image is evidently called, Tendrement (Tenderly) and on some versions evidently in German it is also written, Apfelblüte. Daut un daut lüschen Hoffen – Apple Blossom. That sweet, soft glimmer of hope. I did wonder about the image of weeping pusses. It does raise the issue of who you might have sent this card to and what their reaction might have been. Mine was not sent and does not have any useful information on the back.

Yesterday was a major cat event here as Blackie has been doing sort of poorly with a lack of appetite. Ahead of the holiday weekend I managed to get him into his local vet in the late afternoon. Have I ever mentioned that Blackie seems to have an uncanny need to go to the ER on a holiday weekend or otherwise inconvenient (reads as more expensive too) times? He does. Long story short, no sooner had we gotten home than the vet called to tell me that after looking at his tests (a small amount of ketones in his urine) he needed to go to the ER.

Of course, these days the kitty emergency room is at the hospital where I work. So yes, on what should have been an afternoon off I was hopping in a cab and rushing Blackie down there. (Kim, still recovering from back surgery did the first vet trip but we decided he should stay home for the second.)

I took him fully expecting that he would need to stay overnight. A young resident saw him and ran some more tests. Blackie hates going to my place of employment, but this time I had reason to bless working there. He enjoys a low-key celebrity status as an employee kitty (people came and visited with us and even with him in the back, reporting out to me) and despite it being the Friday night before the long weekend, one of the senior docs who has seen him before came by to have a look at him.

She mentioned as had the other two vets, that he had a lot of bowel not moving in his intestines – kitty constipation. The difference was she gave me instructions for giving him a tiny kitty dose of Miralax. Since eating and resolving constipation were the main issues we decided I would bring him home – he has an appetite enhancer and an anti-nausea drug. Even when we came home last night, he was ready to eat! That combined with the Miralax appears to have set him absolutely right today. I woke to a hungry boy cat and a rather impressively full litterbox. Yesterday reminded me of why I love the hospital where I work. Yay for Blackie!