pet

T’day Cat Tale

Posted by

2

As is sometimes the case I am on the train and taking a moment to start this post. It is a wet and dark Thanksgiving morning and the train to NJ is crowded. (I can only imagine how crowded the trains on the other side of the tracks going into the city are!) I had to hoof it four blocks to Penn Station in a pouring rain.

Luckily, I was dressed for the elements (that coat I mentioned buying in last week’s post arrived – it is excellent) and traveling fairly lightly. There are a bunch of small hotels near there and many families, clearly here for the parade and holiday, were milling around in front of them, despite the rain. I feel badly for them – even these modest hotels cost them a fortune and it should be a nice treat for the kids – too bad about the rain! Kids looked pretty perky anyway.

The last few minutes of my entry into Red Bank on the train.

I had actually planted myself in NJ on Tuesday night – smartly avoiding the worst of the travel press. Kim had decided to sit this one out in Manhattan so I was hoping for a few days there doing errands and working in the garden to prep it for winter. Then Blackie stopped eating on Tuesday night and the malaise it continued and worsened Wednesday morning. Therefore, I had to come back to New York and we had to take him to the hospital where I work now.

I will start by saying that his vet was responsive in a way that I don’t think any of us feel we can expect from our own doctors let alone our vets. Despite being the day before Thanksgiving, she answered my email at 7:30 am right away and we exchanged several emails before making the decision to bring him in. First, we tried an external stimulant which Kim picked up and applied to no avail.

It was a remarkable relief to see familiar faces around me and helping with him. It had seemed somewhat impersonal in the past when I went there but now I am family. This is especially notable because I have felt isolated at this job and it has been hard to get to know people. However, one of my friends (one of the first people I met there and got to know – she is a Veterinarian Technician) carried him out to me and despite his anxiety he clearly enjoyed Erica’s attentions – that woman knows how to pet a cat!

This stuff is like kitty crack but if they won’t eat it is a very good go to.

His illness, or disinterest in food specifically, remains a mystery. After I got him to eat some Churu at the hospital we decided to take him home last night. I’m glad we did; it was the right decision. He’s diabetic and I wouldn’t be surprised if we don’t have to take him in again for a glucose test which will take a full day, but with the holiday if we can get him to eat even small amounts I would rather have him home. He ate a small breakfast for me this morning and so I am heading back to NJ where I will have a handful of friends coming for dinner!

***

Thanksgiving was a quiet affair with the aforementioned couple of friends. I had a winter gardening frenzy of bulb planting (luckily the ground was soft from that Thanksgiving rain) and trimming the dahlias and bagging them up for the winter. Lastly, the geraniums needed to be taken out of the front planters and they are potted and living in the kitchen for now. The trellises I grew my cucumbers on are tucked away in the garage. I had hoped to do more cleanup in the veggie patch but didn’t have time.

Taken this morning. A bit perkier and wondering what on earth Kim and I will do to him next though.

I returned to New York Friday evening. Blackie has resumed eating more regularly but still requiring a stimulant and some encouragement. Essentially we are now in a stage where he’ll eat really good stuff but is still turning his nose up at the healthier real food we expect him to eat. However, he just wolfed down a smidge of smoked salmon so I would say his eating instincts are not totally disabled.

Cookie is taking full advantage of the situation. To be clear, we are martinets when it comes to the cats eating habits. They eat at 6am and 6pm. They get a mix of canned food and dry food is out for them. We have not introduced treats into their lives except to inveigh them to eat on the onset of their stint in New Jersey. When they both stopped eating the first time I was introduced to Churu treats and keep them on hand for such events. Those things must be like kitty crack is all I can say.

Cookie napping recently. I must say, she doesn’t seem concerned about Blackie but is happy about all the treats in the house.

I brought some Churu back from New Jersey with me as Kim had used up our small stash. Cookie keeps taking us over to it and showing it to us – hoping we will take the hint and give her some.

I know I haven’t written much about this new gig. This past year I have been working to get a lot under my belt in a very different area of fundraising and in a very specific place. Building this fundraising operation to full throttle is a journey which has only just launched. I wouldn’t have Blackie or Cookie (or Beau, Gus, Milty, Peaches and Stormy – the NJ Five) sick for anything obviously, but in some ways this recent incident has informed me with an interesting piece of the puzzle for fundraising there.

Some of what I experienced was clearly because I am a staff member, but having used them before with a substantial illness with Blackie, the good communication and much of what I experienced was in play then too – which influenced my decision to take this job. It is a special place, in part possible because it is a non-profit. My job is figuring out how to unlock all its potential.

Comfort in Cats

Posted by

1

Pam’s Pictorama Post: Just coming off the Louis Wain Catland bio (I posted about that last week and it can be found here) I am self-consciously thoughtful suddenly about how the public sentiment about cats has shifted over the past 100+ years since humans just started finding their sea legs with them as domestic beloveds.

It wasn’t long after the Victorian period that cats were taken up in popular advertising at the dawn of the 20th century. This grinning black kit with the yellow bow was the longstanding spokes-cat for the Black Cat Hosiery company and was so popular for decades that the advertising items from it remain in high demand and often is quite pricey today. (This bit of an ad with thanks to Sandi Outland, via @curiositiesantique who sent it several months back – the the sea, my desk has spit it up from the depths for today’s consideration and helped inspire this post.)

I have written about the company on other occasions so if you want more info on the company you can find it in a post here – and more here. The above ad is from a July, 1907 McCalls magazine and other ads on the page are for, most fascinatingly, H&H Pneumatic Bust Forms (yes, like stuffing your bra – no one will know) and Modene hair removal for face, neck and arms – it cannot fail! Our black cat was in good company.

Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.

So in a mere few decades cats began to morph into the area they would command for many decades to come. However, I think it is fair to say that with the part of our lives that are now lived online some of us have taken our interest in cats to a much more highly developed level.

A photo of a young Betty Butler, holding our cat Snoopy back in the 1960’s from a Mother’s Day post this year.

Speaking for myself, my interest in cats began as a small child. Pictorama readers know that I have written numerous times about my childhood cat friends, Snoopy, a white cat with black cow spots with whom I shared many important childish conversations. But there was also Pumpkin who came to me as a tiny kitten ball of orange fluff and grew into an enormous faded-orange tabby who followed me around with dog-like devotion. As I got older my cat Winkie, a tiny tortie polydactyl with huge toed front paws like mitts, was my particular confidant. As a young adult Otto Dix (Miss Otto Dix), a tuxie from a corn farm in New Jersey, became my constant companion and closest friend, a very special cat especially smart cat who I still miss to this day.

However, until relatively recent years, my love and interest in cats (other than what I collect of course) was limited largely to those I knew – mostly my own or those of my mother. I suppose it started even before the pandemic, but certainly during those long days and nights that following cats online became a habit. First there was Maru the Japanese cat (to be precise, a Scottish Straight cat who lives in Japan) who can’t resist box and likes to get into boxes, some that are way too small for him. There was the somewhat neurotic French cat, Henri, a long haired tuxie who has Existential angst. The French also brought us cats playing Paddy Cake which never fails to make me laugh and for some reason is only funny to me in the French – there is an English version.

Still, those were occasional and one-off entertainment. I believe for me that cats as a form of online entertainment and escapism was born of the darkest period of the pandemic, fueled by late nights of waking up and worrying about work. Unable to sleep, I would read Judy Bolton novels (the first in a lot of early series books I read and I wrote about Judy Bolton here) and take a spin through Instagram, sometimes buying the odd item, but also entering the world of cats online and sometimes following even their most daily routines.

I’m probably skipping ahead a bit but Sadie and Dottie (@sadieanddottie), a tuxie and a white kit with cow spots, and who appear to live in Queens, brightened many a dark day when I realized a new post or story had been posted. These largely consist of these two cats growing up, but mostly doing cat stuff like watching birds and napping. Yes, I can watch my own cats do that (although Deitch Studio is situated a little high for birds out the window) and I do, but it turns out I like to watch other cats do it too.

A screen grab of this little video of Sadie.

With almost 14,000 viewers cat mom Lauren Grummel and cat dad Chas Reynolds, Jr. appear to have their hands full supplying frequent doses of their kitties going through their daily paces. A favorite post is an imaginative one of Sadie (the tux) sailing away on a boat at night in search of parents who will give her more treats instead of telling her she’s had enough. (Find it here.)

There is @Fatfink (aka Devlin Thompson) who I first got to know on Facebook, but now is an Instagram constant. His record of the comings and goings of his small menagerie of four cats, (these days Clawford, Kookie, Mr. Biscuits and Miss Rupert), which includes some recent rescues and things like his daily fight over his dinner with them or other such tidbits, are interspersed with an aligned interest in comics – but it is really over the kits that we bond. He sends me great cat videos too which I often find first thing in the morning and cheer my day.

Newly acquired Clawford.
Clawford recently introduced to this rather rarified Deitch portfolio!

A friend on the west coast started supplying me with both funny and moving video snippets of cats during the difficult period of caring for my mother although she continues to send them since I like them so much. These videos, many from The Dodo are chock-a-block full of cats paired with a myriad of other odd animals as friends (deer, dogs, cows) or doing un-catlike activities like motorcycle riding or boating. It is especially lovely and a real kindness as she herself isn’t especially fond of cats so she seeks them out just for me.

Most recently I have fallen hard for team Penny and Felix on Instagram. Penny (@pennythegingercat) is a somewhat sardonic and absolutely adorable orange tabby female (yes, a rarity) and Felix (@felixthepalegingercat) her younger brother, a lean and lanky light orange fellow. (Penny alone has upwards of 650,000 followers!)

The antics of these two (two accounts means twice the fun) include but are not limited to: Felix’s impatience over getting his breakfast in the morning, Penny’s preference of Dad over Mom, Penny sleeping as a face down loaf and the like. These have cheered me endlessly over the past year. Highlights have included Penny entering the Olympics this year as a gold medal winning cat loaf champion and I credit the duo for having invented the term skippity pap (or at least made it enter my personal lexicon) – which is accompanied by a sort of whoosh-smack sound effect that is especially satisfying. It is among the few accounts I turn my sound on for routinely.

The dynamic cat duo’s mom and dad (mom is the voice over for the most part) do a brilliant job of editing, voice over – they are top pros at it and I bless them daily for these inventive missives that come over my transom, brightening all days. Quite simply I cannot recommend them enough for a cat dopamine daily dose.

Four out of the NJ Five here – Gus missing.
Blackie and Cookie peevishly sharing the bed with each other and of course Kim recently.

I have written before about social media and my belief that if content is carefully chosen and tended it can be a rabbit hole of blissful escapism. During the brutal hustle and full-on assault of our shifting political world I have found myself diving deeply into this somewhat alternate universe of cats. As the mother of the NYC duo Cookie and Blackie, and the Jersey Five (Beau, Milty, Gus, Peaches and Stormy) and the head of fundraising for a major emergency animal hospital – you’d think I would get enough daily dose of the kitty world, but simply, no – quite simply, I prefer even more.

I started subscribing to a daily newspaper in high school and have more or less read one daily every since, butI lately find my ability to read above the fold reduced to a nervous skittering across headlines as I head down the page to stories about things like a research study on puppy kindergarten – the super socializing of puppies to see if they make better service animals (NYT and can be found here). So today I pay tribute to those folks online who may not inform my politics, nor deliver my news, but who are vital community which cheers my daily existence.

Peaches

Posted by

2

Pam’s Pictorama Post: Today is an oddball post – I wish to introduce you all to Peaches, the second youngest, female cat of the New Jersey tribe of five. She’s also one of the meanest cats I have ever met. Perhaps considering her story she has some snark coming to her. I will let you decide.

Most readers know that in April of ’23 I inherited a house and five cats from my mother. At her behest, the cats continue to reside here where someone cares for them and the house when I am not here, as Deitch Studio in Manhattan is still our home base. This presents some logistical problems, but fewer than I might have expected when my mother first presented this request, as it became clear that her time was limited.

Shown here with Hobo, our outdoor visitor. They look so much alike! Seems impossible that they are related – Hobo lives too many miles away. But still…

For some background, my mother had briefly whittled her cat family down to something manageable a few years ago when she adopted, first, an all black kitten (Beauregard or Beau) from an agency in Newark, but then followed in rapid succession by two who came to the backdoor (Gus and Stormy) and Peaches whose story I am going to tell today. After the acquisition of Stormy (the youngest) I did request that she stop acquiring cats as it was clear that these were indeed going to end up being my cats.

Our holiday card featuring the whole family (including Hobo) for a quick cat reference.

Unlike the others who, as outlined above, either came through the front door via adoption or showed up repeatedly and starving at the back, Peaches was acquired sight unseen. My mother loved to tell the Peaches acquisition story.

Prized spot in our bedroom. Forbidden territory when the NYC cats are here.

At that time, now about three years ago, my mom had a cousin living with her. They had both grown up in a nearby town called Long Branch and her cousin inherited a house there, but lived with mom for a few years. Word was, back near her house in Long Branch, a friend heard a cat meowing over several days and had called Animal Control to find out what was going on and get the cat.

Seems somehow this cat had gotten away from the mother and the litter and was trapped in a basement after falling down a hole. Poor little thing was starving and crying.

Peaches does play with toys.

My mom knew that it was likely that a feral kitten would ultimately be put down as unadoptable. She called Animal Control in Long Branch as soon as the cat was picked up and told them not to put her down and that she would take it.

I guess the guy said, Lady, you don’t want this cat! It is the meanest cat we’ve ever had to catch. So wild we had to use a broom handle to move the carrier with her in it! And of course mom said she didn’t care and wanted the cat.

She very much enjoys watching the activity on the deck where chipmonks and other critters have been known to roam. Recently I found what I think were groundhog muddy tracks across it so quite a show.

She arrived and was christened Peaches for the woman who had heard her and called Animal Control originally. She entered our house at the time as the youngest and only female cat of the house. To my knowledge no one has ever actually touched Peaches since she came to Oxford Avenue. She hid at first and then slowly assimilated to the extent that she would hang with the pack of cats but keep a wide birth (six or more feet) from any human.

Left to her own devices (which she largely is) she seems quite content.

Over the past several years she has thawed slightly. She now willingly sit in the same room as us, sometimes quite close. When I am feeding them she will come right up to me but if I try to touch her or get too close where she is curled up she will hiss, spit and growl. On this trip however, she “accidentally” jumped up on the arm of my chair and stared me in the eye for several long moments before panic set in and she flew back off. I was as stunned as she was.

Milty and Peaches.

She has one outstanding cat friendship in the house, with Milty, our most senior cat. I will occasionally find them sleeping together. She’ll go over and gently groom him once in a while. It seems like an unlikely pairing, but I am pleased she has a compatriot among the cats.

This just the other day. Happy Peaches.

There have been days this summer when I have caught her rolling and stretching happily. I think she is a contented cat in general, even if her interactions with the human population are limited. I used to joke with my mother that in ten years when Peaches was happily installed on my lap being petted we would look back and remember how we couldn’t get near her. I am less sure of that future, but she’s one of the Butler family cats now to stay.

Uncle Zack

Posted by

2

Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: As I start writing this post I am in New Jersey on Saturday evening with Beauregard, the huge all black cat, who is the master of this NJ Butler house. It is the end of several sunny days of stay here and I will head home tomorrow – potentially completing this on the train if I cannot before.

This photo postcard came to me via eBay and is an odd choice for me. This little girl with her chicken on a leash charmed me. Small children with pet chickens seems to be popular on the internet these days so poultry pets remain popular. Working for a veterinary hospital with an active Exotics service, we see a fair number of chickens. (Presumably chickens that are for eating go to a different sort of vet than us although obviously we’d care for one in need if presented!)

The little girl is nicely dressed in trousers and boots with a somewhat sporty coat with a design of the buttons across her shoulder and chest. She looks quite happy as does the (large) chicken on a string leash. There’s one or two other chickens, behind a fence in the distance who look on and the soil looks dusty. The nearest vegetation we can see are trees way off in the distance and the sun is casting long shadows. Given her attire, it was chilly.

This card was never sent and looks like it was quite beloved, handled. It is undated, but on the back in a child’s neatest script it says uncle zack.

Many years ago I remember my mother had a video of a woman she knew slightly about her and her pet chicken. I don’t remember the chicken’s name, but it lived in the house, primarily in a sort of all season room at the front of the house. A cared for pet chicken might live to be ten or twelve years old according to the internet, I actually thought it was older. The chicken in the video went everywhere with this woman – today it might have been considered a comfort animal.

Recently in a talk given to staff to celebrate diversity, one of the vet’s pointed out that some clients feel that people belittle their choice of an usual animal and express surprise that they would pay so much for the care of a fish, tiny turtle or perhaps chicken or duck. (I also heard about surgery on a goldfish recently which fascinated me! The surgeon was evidently personally quite fond of goldfish and frustrated by a common cause of death in them he was able to improve but not resolve the fish-y issue.) However, as animal lovers our heart knows no such boundaries and be it pigeon or porcupine we are committed to them and find great happiness with critters in all species, shapes and sizes.

The Three Month Mark

Posted by

2

Pam’s Pictorama Post: It seems like an odd moment perhaps to have a progress report today, but my mind is deeply there right now so here we go. I have been writing all week – an endless litany of editing and producing so perhaps it is just hard to turn that part of my brain off.

I have had reason to reflect on how in fact the discipline of writing this blog twice a week every week (since summer of 2014) has formed and honed my nascent skills over time. It has its own voice of course, and that is different than most of my writing for work, but it does help me add a lighter tone to some of the newsletter things we produce and just produce the sheer volume required.

Weirdly fundraising work is a lot of writing. I am not sure it is ever presented that way to aspirants in the field and no one gave me a writing test back when I started. (We still took typing tests! It was at the very end of that era however as computers were just phasing in.) However, unless you work in an enormous shop where all of the proposals and materials are produced by dedicated staff, you end up writing a heck of a lot. (My friends in those large shops assure me that they need to do a lot of editing of that work too because they understand the particulars best.)

Little girl I was holding was a bit smaller yet than this one here.

I give a basic writing test to most applicants – as much to make sure that they transfer information accurately and follow directions as anything else. Folks who will need to do a lot of more complex writing are asked to either do a more advanced test or submit previous proposals or writing samples. When it comes to the basic test I am often shocked by the errors. I mean they could share it with a half dozen of their friends before submitting and I wouldn’t know, yet many don’t seem to bother and there are often egregious errors.

On the other hand, I have also had excellent writing tests submitted by people who were less engaging during the interview process – and let’s not even start with what Zoom has done to interviewing. (Although now it is the accepted first step for every interview.) I try very hard to have an in-person with finalists, although I just hired someone who was moving back to NYC from San Francisco. He seems to be a good hire, although about six inches taller than I had anticipated. He sent a photo of his cat Moose along with his application which of course I found endearing. Moose is a marmalade tabby.

Not Moose, but somewhat like him.

Leaving the writing of others aside, the demand has meant that I have been writing a variety of things pretty much since I walked in the door back in January. While much of this kind of writing and editing is second nature to me, being in such a different organization and trying to capture it has been a challenge. I find myself writing proposals to fund medical equipment I didn’t imagine existed (a 3-D printer which could be used to create everything from a new beak for a Great Horn Bill or a replacement joint for a pup) to writing direct mail copy for an appeal.

A turtle like this one, but not this one!

But how to capture the essence? What’s it like to stand in a back hall and see a tiny turtle no bigger than a half dollar being rushed by for care by specialists in exotic animals. (It was so moving to think someone cared so much for this tiny guy and could even tell he or she wasn’t well.) Or to cuddle a scared tabby kitten from a rescue group which is being evaluated for surgery on a malformed leg so she will be adoptable. (We raise money for the funds to pay for such surgeries and it was my first real encounter with a beneficiary.)

The vets and techs (and really everyone there) love these animals fiercely and they are single-minded in the best outcome for the animal.

Pre-pandemic I bought flowers weekly for my office, but gave it up when we returned to work. This week I bought some in memory of my mom and the one year of her passing. Reminded me how nice it is to have flowers around!

Meanwhile, I have written previously (read it here) my own office is a block away in a somewhat decaying residential building which leaks and lacks public access. (The photo at the top was taken from the rooftop space at our building.) My staff yearns for the ability to have pets in the offices as is allowed down the street in the main building. I hope to negotiate this at some point and install an office comfort cat, but fear at best in reality it will add a cat to my own menagerie on the weekends. (This is the only place I could ever work where the response to I have seven cats is not shock, but more along the lines of – Oh, eight would be great!)

So that is a small slice of life at the new gig – more to come I am sure.

Mom and Snoopy

Posted by

2

Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: Today’s post is of a family photo, something I haven’t done in a long time, and it is one of my mom. The one year anniversary of her passing is tomorrow.

I wrote frequently about the surprisingly interesting time caring for her at the end of her life, here and here, and at her death I wrote a brief tribute to her here. However, a friend suggested that I find a photo of her to frame for my office as a way of recognizing the anniversary so I dug through some mountains of pictures in New Jersey last weekend and emerged triumphant.

Many years ago my mother’s mom put together a photo album for mom and her brother John for Christmas. I don’t remember seeing my uncle’s, but mom’s, although slim, is made up of wonderful early childhood photos of her that I had never seen. Mom’s father died young of a heart attack. He was much beloved to me during the short time I knew him (Poppy!), but I was only about four or five when he died. There aren’t a huge number of photos of him at all so it is extra nice to find these.

However, in addition to those photos which are mostly Betty and John as small kids with their various pets, mom had tucked a number of other early photos in and today’s photo is from that batch. This would have been taken around 1969, mom was still wearing her hair a bit long – she cut it short a year or so later, Snoopy just out of kittenhood.

Without knowing for sure I am fairly certain that this was taken at our house in Englewood, New Jersey, It was a tiny, cozy two bedroom cottage on Jones Road and across from what seemed to a tiny tot me to be an enormous park. (Actually, a google search shows a very substantial park on Jones Road, so perhaps my childhood estimate was more accurate than I think!)

Mom is holding the very first pussy cat in a long line of pets, Snoopy. I think I named him, for the comic strip and because he had black spots – he was a cow spotted kitty. In retrospect it is hard to believe that my older sister would have allowed me to name him (she was bossy!), but nonetheless that is my memory.

Snoopy was just a great cat. You’ve heard tales of my dressing him up in doll clothes and pushing him in my doll stroller – also playing circus dog with him and the German Shephard, Duchess. He was a lovely, easy going boy cat. He and the dog were buddies and unlike the dog, he rarely got into trouble (there was the time he walked across wet red paint on the porch and then through the kitchen, but that would be the exception that made the rule) and was loved by all equally. I believe his origin was as a barn cat – friends of my parents had a farm in South Jersey and supplied us with rather excellent cats for many years.

It’s funny that seeing him so many years later (his life was sadly cut short by an Akita several years later) his spots and markings are surprisingly immediately familiar. Black over one eye. I can remember petting him when I look at this.

My guess is that dad was trying out a new camera as this has a hallmark of being a rather posed photo. Dad wasn’t typically at his best with still photos. If anything I am better with those and lesser with moving images and he the opposite. He had an extraordinary eye for shooting movies, but somehow it didn’t quite apply to still images. This photo for me is an exception however. It captures mom and Snoopy perfectly and even reminds me of the wonderful garden at that house where these trees likely were. (When we moved to the shore, probably later that year, it was many years before we lived in a place with a garden and our first home was sandy, often salty soil right on the river, which flooded frequently. Mom struggled mightily to at least have a vegetable garden and some scrubby trees. Readers know I now glory in keeping up the garden my mom created at the house I inherited.)

One thing of note for me is that mom appears to be wearing both a watch (although on her right arm and she was right handed) and a wedding band. Mom never wore either later in life. I think she went through a series of wristwatches when she was younger and gave up – her active life and hands constantly in things probably did both that and the ring in. I know that the early version of her wedding band wasn’t gold (turned her finger green!) and she stopped wearing it. Years later my father gave her a gold band which I now have, but to my memory she just almost never wore jewelry. (Early arthritis in her fingers exacerbated this. I fight it in my own hands, especially with the fingers I broke a few years ago running.)

She is wearing a camel colored sweater coat, a very mom color. If it was a few years later jeans would be on the bottom half of her, but this early it was probably a skirt or some other trousers. She has a white (cotton I bet) top under the sweater. Mom was very allergic to wool and gave it up early in life. She wore a lot of polar fleece later on.

There is a little tear on the left of the photo where the color emulsion has peeled. I need to keep this in a not especially light or hot place I think. The color is faded.

Clearly I take after my father’s side of the family in this regard as I consider the purchase and wearing of jewelry to be one of life’s great pleasures! (I have written about some of my favorite finds here and here.) My paternal grandmother loved jewelry (Gertie! There’s a whole post for her here.) and my dad inherited that love and bought us three women in his life jewelry frequently. As a result, I have all of mom’s (virtually unworn) and my sister’s which tended toward a more contemporary design than the vintage pieces I am drawn to.

While it is mostly accepted that I resemble my mom more than my dad, I’ve not been sure about that as I age and look somewhat more like Gertie. Having said that, the resemblance between me and mom is strong in this picture, the differences in our coloring being less evident. (Mom was extremely freckled, fair and green eyed – I am fair but less freckled and brown eyed. Her hair had red tints that mine never had.)

Finding this photo was a gift and I am grateful! To have mom and Snoopy together to consider in this picture is a treat I had not anticipated and I cannot think of a better way to honor her life and the sad anniversary of her passing. Thank you mom.

Cathouse

Posted by

0

Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: A dollhouse setting and a kitten in doll’s clothes – what’s not to like? I was speeding along my feed in Instagram when I stopped in my tracks for this one (sold by @baileighfaucz) and had to buy it. She has a beautifully curated stream of photos, virtually all for sale and I am often tempted. It is only fiscal responsibility that binds me, until I find one like this I just have to have.

There is something about the scale of the furniture in this picture which appeals to me. The kitten is too big for the space but only by a little, like a fluffy oversized giant kitty in his or her space, unable to sit in the tiny chair or at the little table. The wallpaper (wall covering?) is closer to kitty’s scale, just a little too big for the furniture. Somehow the little landscape is precisely above the cat’s head, right in the middle of the picture.

Beau last week, very reluctantly wearing a party hat.

There are many textures between the fabric wall covering, the blanket or towel on the floor, a little lacy tablecloth, and the cat’s dress. There is that little landscape which we can read as a painting or even think about it as a window to the outside. I like to think the thing next to it is a calendar, but I think it is another picture. The wrapped white box (is that a tiny mirror atop it?) reads as a refrigerator to me although it could be a clothing cupboard too.

Kit is right in the middle of this evenly divided picture. It is well lit, but a bit heavier from stage right or our left, casting shadows on the carpet for the chair, cat and other objects. (It is also quite overexposed drifts all the way to a white out in the lower right corner.) This kitten is a solid citizen, fluffy and gray. He or she looks barely patient with this process.

Miltie sporting Winsome’s hat.

Kim has gently suggested that it isn’t nice to dress our kitties up and take pictures of them, so I mostly contain myself on the subject. Winsome and I have made a few attempts at cats in hats in New Jersey recently. There is part of me that would love to be setting them up in dioramas and taking their photos. Perhaps it was my profession in a past life – or maybe I was the cat!

Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.

The Pictorama collection does not tend to a lot of this genre of postcard (I think of them as the equivalent of the Dogville Comedies for cats, for those of you who are in the know about those) – kittens dressed up and posed in various scenes. The rather superb one of kittens in a faux balloon above was the only that I could think of off the top of my head. (That early post can be found here.)

There were several others from the same set, but while tempting none of them were quite as engaging for me and no others were purchased. While professionally made, there is a charmingly homemade quality to this one (for the record, there’s no identifying photo studio, nothing written on the back and it was never sent) and I think the photographer just happened to hit it right on the nose.

Ma Cheri Petit Josette

Posted by

0

Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: Cat annoyance and dog acquiescence seems to be the theme of this card. Kit and pup are about the same size and both qualify for this nice little comfy looking house. Although kitty has laid claim from atop, this little doggy fellow guards the entrance. Feline high ground notwithstanding, the dog blocks the door – although he isn’t really as this is a set and I don’t think the cat or the dog would especially choose to curl up inside this adorable little house. In fact I am not sure either would comfortably fit, although we all know that wouldn’t stop the cat if indeed inclined.

The animals of my past have generally preferred without rather than within. For example, there was briefly a doghouse in our backyard. My dad purchased it secondhand somewhere, perhaps one of his beloved garage sales, and painted it up, making it a fair replica of our house. A neighbor with a sense of humor supplied a tv antennae. (Oh gosh, how many readers don’t even know what that is?) It very much resembled Snoopy’s doghouse in the comic strip which would have appealed to my father. He liked to read it to us as kids.

A black cat in cat house card I entirely forgot I own, from a 2018 post called Cat House. Pams-Pictorama.com collection.

A large pen of open rails and wire surrounded it and our German Shepard, Duchess, was invited within. I have no memory of Duchess in that doghouse however and she was rarely in the pen as she mostly lived in the house. Although our cats were free-range, our dogs never were and considering she was a sizable German Shepard of somewhat mercurial affections, that made sense. (Another doggy denizen of Waterman Avenue actually spent more time in it, a naughty rescue named Charley Brown – beagle mix. Perhaps the doghouse influenced my mother’s naming convention.)

The pooch in this card is wearing a leash it might be noted, although he is clearly placid. So while seated quietly enough here, he was not wandering at will. Kitty is beautiful and fluffy, very photogenic indeed. She is pissy, all annoyed ears though as only a cat can be. There is a small food or water bowl on one side of the dog and the interior of the house is alluring with some cushy looking material stuffed inside. Something is attached to the front of the little house and it is very speculative, however it may actually be the dog’s leash. The tiny abode is made of some nice wicker-y material and oddly it appears to levitate slightly – the cat’s weight on an uneven surface tipping it?

A similar situation from a 2019 post, called Mornin’. Pams-Pictorama.com collection.

The three different colors and textures help make this image work. Fluffy kit, woven house and sleek, shiny coated canine. The cat’s ears and tail do the rest – I suspect she was a pro. One can imagine a photo studio back in the dawn of the 20th century, snapping pics of posing animals all day long until enough images for a continued line of cards could be produced. I think a lovely way to spend one’s days. As I have already said, regular intervals of dog petting at work has increased my quality of life substantially in recent months.

French readers please feel free to send a rough translation!

I am supplying a photo of the back of the card and perhaps someone fluent in French can translate it for us. The hand is fine and even, but small and too hard for me to see clearly enough to try to get a translation. It is clearly from Papa to his daughter Josette. Someone else has included a small message in bright blue ink – Jeanette? A sister? The card is addressed to Mademoiselle Josette Cauchois, 15 rue Saint Laurent, Chantilly. It is postmarked Paris, 1914, but the date is obscured.

Not knowing Josette’s situation it is pure speculation, but I must say, I would be very pleased to have received this card from my own Papa.

Bill, Benron, Iowa

Posted by

0

Pam’s Pictorama Post: This fine fat furry fellow hails to us from 1910 Diagonal, Iowa. He found his way to me via the wonderfully thoughtful Sandi Outland (@curiositiesantique, an antiques emporium in Texas) who sent me this. Some of you readers might remember that Sandi sent me an utter great holiday card with a period photo on it which inspired a post found here. She is also of the fascinating angry snowman collection which inspired the purchase of a card I wrote about here.

Sandi tucked this in this nice reproduction Felix valentine, shown below. I have often thought I should have a specimen example of this card and she has saved me the trouble of doing so. Thank you again Sandi!

This Valentine based on a popular period one of Felix.

Bill, the cat of our card, appears to be a solid citizen of the tabby cat category. Although I have not had a personal association with a tabby since childhood, they are dependably nice cats. The two that graced my childhood were Zipper and Tigger.

I wrote a bit about how Zipper and I as a small child would watch our fish tank together and he would “pat” the fish on the glass, guilty thoughts going through is mind! (Post found here.) He came to us as a starved and tormented stray, so small he was in danger of slipping into the crack in the backseat of the car. He grew into a swaggering dominant male of the neighborhood, holding parties with his kitty cronies in the garage, late night raids on a neighbors eel box! (Zipper’s story can be found here.)

Zipper was gone by the time Tigger came into our lives. He was one of a litter of kittens of our cat Winkie, a great tortoiseshell. My mom was generally a responsible and determined neuter and spay-er of our cats, but somehow Winkie got away from her in advance of being spayed. We kept the four kittens: the tiger Tigger, a marmalade named Squash, and two grays – Ping and Pong.

Tigger who had rather perfect markings was a good natured cat. She ran away once and was found in a neighbor’s barn, but sadly eventually wandered away again not to be found. I have always hoped she found another home, perhaps less bustling and with fewer cats than we had claim to at the time. I think she wanted to be an only cat.

Bill, the fellow in this card, appears to be in charge of a store. My guess is that he spent many a contented hour chasing mice (perhaps even the occasional rat) there and was soundly rewarded for his work in this area. Still, he does not appear to have lived on mice alone. I don’t know if he is just sitting on his tail oddly or if it was docked for some reason, but he is a splendid looking fellow, evidently in his prime here. Behind him is a wonderful wooden box emblazoned with Independent Baking Co. Crackers(?), Biscuits, Etc. Davenport, Iowa. I would claim it for my collection any day offered.

The card is addressed to Miss Sarah Stock, Storm Lake Iowa, Box 734, written in the most beautiful script. It was postmarked and dated April 26, 1910 from Diagonal, Iowa.

Back of card. Beautiful hand – look at how the “t” in storm forms the “L” in Lake! Still, is hard to read!

Despite the beauty of the script I am having some trouble reading it, however it appears to say, Dear Sarah, I read another letter from you this morning. I spose I’ll have to answer that to I just finished one last night, let me introduce you to Bill police patrol of Benton Ia. He looks wise. I presume to you like cats as well as I do. I can’t read his name (and no, he didn’t seem fond of periods) and I am open to suggestions. (For some reason I have assigned the sender to be a man, but it could be a woman.)

Although I have come close on several occasions as it happens I have never traveled to Iowa. The university there was under brief consideration for grad school, but life intervened before it got to the visiting stage and my grad school education never materialized. The Jazz at Lincoln Center orchestra played there on tour and that was the most likely way I would have found myself there as an adult, but alas it never happened. The animal hospital I work for now is highly unlikely to send me there, although I guess you never know in life – I could make it there yet.

Dog Days

Posted by

2

Pam’s Pictorama Post: As someone who has a publicly professed love of cats, my affection for dogs should not be denied. Even when it comes to toys I frequently have to shake my head with regret that I do not have space (or resources) to collect those as well. In reality, there are probably more great antique toy dogs than cats. I occasionally give in and purchase a canine toy, Bonzo is a favorite! (Some doggone good posts can be found here, here and here.)

Kim bought me this little metal painted fellow at an antique store in New Jersey over the Christmas holiday. I like his erect, watchful attitude. Despite his paint loss, he is still a chipper white with a jolly red collar and somehow still has a little gleam in his eye. He’s got a nubbin of a tail. From one profile he looks ready to play and from the other side more guard pup. I sort of wonder if he was considered a toy or if he was more of a collectible even in his day.

Playful profile. Pams-Pictorama.com collection.

I have written some about the dogs of my past, my German Shepard Duchess in particular as a kid. (A post for a favorite photo postcard where I also talk about her can be found here.) Other dogs of my childhood included a beagle mixed named Charlie Brown (a bit of a miscreant mutt), and a terribly frighten cockapoo rescue named Pooch who you could never get near. So for all the many cats there was a fairly constant background of dogs too. My childhood was a cheerful parade of animals, all found by my mother with the exception of a few who found us.

As ongoing Pictorama readers know, I recently made a wholesale change in jobs and I now oversee fundraising for a large veterinary hospital and my dog petting time has skyrocketed overnight. Thus far I have met many more dogs than cats and while some of the dogs are clearly (if understandably) unhappy about being there, a surprising number are perfectly happy to be petted and even climb in my lap. (It’s a wash and wear life these days, lots of drool and fur.)

I do not know what Cookie and Blackie think of the smell of me when I come home now. (Goodness, what trash has she been associating with today?) Cookie did give my shoes a major sniffy going over the other evening. However, since I began regular visits to the five cats in New Jersey I think they have adjusted their idea of exactly what I do when I leave the house in the morning. I used to speculate that they thought I went to the vet every day since it was the only place out of the apartment they had ever been – now that appears to be true.

A photo of some boxes arriving at the new office – picture was taken to thank Daniel at JALC who sent them over.

This little metal mascot may come to work with me and guard me there. I am thinking that maybe the office will be a bit of a repository of doggie items. I have finally moved some of the essential items over, such as the elephant box Kim made (post about that and other office desk items can be found here) and bevy of plastic pigs and a cat given to me by my friend Eileen, and of course a gold lucky waving cat. (My penchant for those is penned about here.) I concentrate better when surrounded by these familiar items, although I am getting used to storing dog beds and cat toys from Galas past too.