cat photo

Way Up!

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: Today is Metropolitan Postcard Club Show Day! Yay for new postcards for Pictorama! We herald that event with a postcard from the last show, purchased for it’s kitten collage-ness.

Photos of kittens floating in balloons is a sort of sub-genre of early 20th century photography and this is a late example – almost a tribute to those. This card was mailed from Kingston, New York on July 27, 1944. (As an aside, I had cousins who lived near Kingston, New York and was probably visiting them thirty years later.) So it is later than most of my collection but is reminiscent of those earlier cards. (You can check out some of those posts here and here.)

In the Kills refers to the upstate area full of small water bodies (kille is Dutch for waterway) and those areas such as Fishkill, Peekskill and Catakill (the last being where those cousins resided) named thusly.

Pams-Pictorama.com collection.

These cats are a further play on words with the broader Catskill area. The postcard play on words was popular and I have future posts devoted to more of these as of course cat cards are like nip to me. We have two fluffy kits in a basket with a “balloon” that looks like maybe it is a fishnet stocking or real fish netting around a ball, which is probably then held by a string of fishline we cannot see. An ever so slightly cross-eyed moon face looks on – the yellow is a nice contrast in this otherwise almost dark and stormy card. I gather these kits are making their journey at night.

Pams-Pictorama.com collection – very similar!

The back of this card is printed in an unusually legible hand. It says, Dear Very Dear Elinor Hello; Sweetness. How be you, and the partner – O.K. I hope – the same here – in this grand restful place – I am getting along famously – take a walk most every day – and am receiving excellent care – in the intervals – lots of love from your old man – brother. AL. It is addressed to, Mrs. R.H. Robinson, 155 Clymer Street, Brooklyn, 11, New York.

The ingenuity of cards like this interest me. I am always looking at them and thinking about which two of the seven I could convince to sit in a basket (none) and tie a little ball to it, etc. I am sure it was a day’s work that was harder than it may look. Meanwhile, this one has these collage elements of the moon and background layered in. It is though, remarkably similar to the earlier one I show here.

Back of card.

Meanwhile, Kim and I are off to the West Village soon to see what irresistible cat cards are in store for me today. Wish me happy collecting! It is bright and sunny here in New York and having a spring swing back toward warm today. Kim is braving downtown for the first time since his back surgery – getting a bit of cabin fever I think doing nothing these days really but working on hard his next book. We’ll get him some air and a change of scenery. More to come!

Postal Kit

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: Today is a return to feline real photo postcard territory with this recent acquisition off of eBay. This nice looking tabby in-charge is puss as stern postmistress. (This brings to mind a behind-the-scenes tour at work this week which for some reason revealed an unusual number of tabbies submitting to various treatments. Tough week for tabbies I say.)

This post office scene caught my attention, in part I think, because I thought it was a clever collage of images. The cat, seated sternly and evidently staring the small child, could be another photo that was neatly trimmed and inserted into the image. I have revised my thinking after close examination and now I believe it is really just a mirror behind the cat revealing a wall papered wall across from him or her on the other side of the room.

Back of the postcard.

Neat and numbered tidy cubbies await their mail and small packages. It reminds me a bit of the post office at my college years ago of similar vintage. Although it was less trusting and there were little doors with combination locks. I always loved those and have seen them for sale and been tempted although Pictorama readers know I don’t really live a life that can accommodate a wall of mailboxes, however endearing.

Smythe Park, Mansfield, PA. Photographed by W.A. Bates.

You can’t see it easily in the photo, but in pencil in the lower left corner someone has written the date, July 21, 1907 and initials, which may be L.E.T. It is nice that our sender did this because the postmark is obscured. The location may read as Kent – Connecticut I speculated at first, but a quick search shows more likely Nelson Lakes near Kent, New York. On the back in a fairly painstaking script is says, I had a nice time at Nelson. This is the P.O. at Nelson. Lyle E. Tubbs. It was mailed to, Miss Grace Corselius, Claremont, VA.

Smythe Park, Mansfield, PA, W.A. Bates.

The card maker is W.A. Bates, Postcard Manufacturer, Mansfield, PA. AI made me laugh when I search this as it informed me that W.A. Bates was known as Bert. And evidently, he was known foremost as a local photographer who got into producing his popular photos as real photo postcards. It also notes that a John Bates who owned a pharmacy, Bates Drugstore, also published these postcards – I can’t imagine exactly where AI may have dug those tidbits up, but it does paint a sort of cheerful picture of him and his life, a brother, father or other family member investing in his business.

Bates Studio, Mansfield, PA. More or less contemporaneous to our postcard.
Written by Bert?

Bert recorded largely local history in this fashion from 1905 until 1938. So mine is a rather early effort on his part. I will note that Kent, NY and Mansfield, PA are about three hours away from each other so if the locale is correct Bates was a bit far afield from his usual local bailiwick, although this was clearly a commercial gig.

Despite evidence of a long career, I have shared two from a small sampling of photo images I could find online, remains of his likely prodigious output. It is interesting that one is of what I assume is his studio. I note that on the back of that card, which is for sale on eBay right now on a card that was not used postally, it looks as if it may have been written by the man himself. I wonder. It is a really sort of lovely building and one can imagine all those interesting porticoes and fun nooks from the inside. The other photo is of a local park I guess he was known to photograph. I hope Bert and John and their families had a lovely life in Mansfield, PA at the dawn of the 20th century. From here it looks like they did.

Family

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: Today’s is a recently acquired photo postcard – it showed up in the mail last night as a matter of fact. I bought it off eBay on a whim and am more charmed by it in person. This photo today would probably be photo shopped or fully AI generated which makes its skill – and its imperfect bits – that much more endearing.

Seven cats are lined up here – several are looking at a spot in front of them and we assume the person behind the camera has something to capture their gaze that way. Almost all of them are very fluffy indeed, and the dark haired one on the left could almost make another cat with that enormous tail. It says a family group and I wonder if it is mom and dad on either end and this variety of kits betweenn. There is one tabby, third from the right who doesn’t fit the family fur, short-haired or so it would appear.

If we assume that mom and dad are on either end, there is a dead ringer for each of them in the pile – the white kit all the way left and the one next to it. The others are a bit more of a wild mix and I really like the one who wouldn’t sit and has his or her back up a bit. Dad just has an insane amount of fluff and both are well brushed and maintained.

Everyone is seated on a garden bench with painted some sort of boxes acting as end tables. There is a nice cushion on the bench being enjoyed by the cats – no idea how they got the cats on the end to pose so perfectly. There are cushions on the ground in front of the bench, covered in a sort of oriental rug pattern. I wonder if those cushions are for the back of the bench but didn’t work for the photo. We can’t see much of a garden behind them, but we get glimpse of the flowering shrubs behind them.

This card is undated and was never sent. It appears to be American made but there is no maker credit on the back.

As the mom of seven cats myself (the Jersey Five and NY kitties) I have to admit that I do not have a single photo of all of them in one frame. I actually only seem to have four of the Jersey Five together, let alone along with Cookie and Blackie. So hats off to this ambitious photographer and cat parents somewhere and back in time.

Kitten Card

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: Today I have plucked this hand-colored card out of the pile. It was used as a birthday card and it certainly is cheerful enough to make a good one. Kitten pictures are like dopamine hits and during stressful times if I can, I find watching videos of them or looking at pictures of them very soothing. Given the feline nature of Pictorama this is probably not surprising.

Meanwhile, I have seven cats, no shortage here, and yet looking at more cats still appeals to me, although I do recognize that I do not need to acquire any at the moment. (I’m not sure I documented the sudden acquisition of five cats when my mother died, although longstanding readers probably figured it out. For new readers, that is how I went from always having two to having seven more or less overnight. It’s a lot of cats.) All that to say I am cheerfully contributing to your dopamine acquisition online today, a bit of cat fluff to cheer your weekend, (another) rainy one if you are in Manhattan. (Not to mention to help get with the time change – that certainly snuck up on me.)

This young woman might be from the early 1920’s to as late as the 1930’s when we take her clothes and hair (careful marcel wave) into account. She holds two very likely little suspects, a tabby (always a good look on those) with his small paws wrapped around her arm, and fluffy white one with spots, the true color of which is hard to peg.

The kittens are small enough to be easily subdued by the young woman holding them. Her dress has a wild print and has been painted in this interesting orange, red stripe running down the front and a sort of Keith Haring-esque pattern. She sports a bracelet which appears to be silver and has a charm hanging off of it. Her ruffled cuffs and collar have been left a bright white. There are some sort of illegible decorations down the front of her dress and artificial looking ropes of flowers are color sketched in behind her. If she wasn’t such a pretty woman, she would recede behind all this visual noise, however she holds her own.

Inked on the back in neat script is says, Dear Kathie, Wishing you many happy returns of the day. From Lily & John. However, there is no postmark, it must have been handed to her or on gift perhaps.

Given my affection for such antique missives, it probably isn’t surprising that I am still a sender of cards. Although the circle is smaller than it used to be, physical cards still go out for birthdays and for some, Valentines, Easter and for a large group (as you have seen) Christmas. Are the best of my cards being saved to turn up in the future? It’s hard to say, but I believe the folks I send them to seem to appreciate the physical reminder that I am thinking of them and have chosen a card for them. (And who doesn’t love a bit of unexpected mail that isn’t a bill?) However, it is undeniably an anachronism, albeit one I hold dear. So this is a cat card for all of you today – I will say that personally I needed a cat pic today and this one has done just fine.

Family

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: I feel like I used to find more photos like this one for the Pictorama archive. I discovered this on eBay. Unfortunately it is quite faded, I have even assisted it a bit here. Still, this family with their mostly matching haircuts and each girl sporting a member of a kitten family was too good resist.

This photo postcard was never mailed and the clothes on the kids are sort of timeless, but I would guess maybe the 1920’s or 30’s. They are posed by the “side of the house” from what I can figure. I would say spring considering the shortness of the grass, the clothes and of course the kittens they hold.

My sister Loren in an undated photo I keep next to my desk at home. Judging from the car I would say from the early 1980’s. If I was in NJ I might find a photo of all of us. Will have to wait!

You can’t really see it easily but there is a great variety in kittens here. From left to right we have a tortie, a tabby, a sort of gray soft stripe and a gray tuxie. Not at all impossible that they are all from the same litter however.

These kids are clearly also of the same litter! Far from identical, however there is a strong family resemblance brought out further by their matching bowl style hair cuts. Each one wears it a bit differently though – bangs aside or straight, one where they are cropped short. The girl in the plaid dress is clearly the eldest but the exact order of the others is left to our musing.

A close look at their faces and the girls look more alike to each other than they do with the man who I have been assuming is dad. Family resemblance is a strange thing I always think. Sometimes I am sitting on the subway or walking down the street and a family passes and all I can think is that they could never deny all being related. This always comes to mind in my reading of early novels (someone denying a child is theirs) and this was satisfied as a plot point in a Rose Mulholland novel recently – the striking resemblance to her father could not be denied! More on that possibly as a tomorrow post.

A still young Cookie and Blackie bearing some resemblance here.

My family sort of mixed and matched with familial likeness – not looking alike, stronger resemblance to one parent when young and then another. My sister and I, she of the curly hair and I of the straight, never looked much alike however once someone who knew me from work walked up to my brother and announced we must be siblings. (We were at a rare moment, like these girls, when we were sporting approximately the same haircut.)

My brother may be surprised to hear me say it but, although he and I have always looked more strongly like my mother’s side of the family, I saw a recent photo where he looks very much like our father. (I think it is the beard Edward.) Kim has a rather extraordinary family likeness with his brothers and I gather his fraternal grandmother from whom he inherited his distinctive eyes. There is an additional family resemblance though also to both his mother and his father.

This is of course also true for cats and cat families. My mom used to quote from an old genetics text that this kind of cat and that kind of cat likely to produce this or this cat. I could never keep it straight.

There are days when you can tell that Cookie and Blackie hatched from the same mom and dad combo. Other times, Cookie being smaller, mightier and a tuxie to Blackie’s bigger all black handsomeness makes it appear as if there is no resemblance.

Beau (left) and Blackie meet for the first time.

The one litter of kittens I grew up with bore a remarkable resemblance to each other (variations on gray and tabby striped), but not to their mother (Winkie, a tortie) at all. And for that reason perhaps, she utterly disowned any knowledge of them after a point. I have commented on how Blackie and Beauregard (the all black male kitty of the Jersey Five) stared at each other, clearly in recognition of the fact that they looked alike. (A post about the New York cats meeting the New Jersey cats can be found here.)

It is too bad no one thought to include the mom cat in this photo – assuming she was a denizen of the same household. It would have rounded things out nicely. It is fun to speculate that the cats and the kids grew up over time side by side.

Snapshot

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: I am giving Pictorama readers a brief break from postcards today. I feel like it has been a long time since I have posted a snapshot. It isn’t because I don’t look for them, but photos that wander into the Pictorama realm are a bit more rarified it seems. This one was found and quickly purchased on eBay recently as someone was smart and noted that a nice Felix lurks on the window shade.

The picture is undated however her clothing and this nice deckled edge on the print puts me in mind of the early fifties. (I recently saw an early deckle edge photo trimmer online. It appeared to be one for home use. I gather Kodak sold printing paper with the deckle edge for a couple of decades – both things interested me because I always thought it was only evident in commercially processed photos.)

It is a small photo, only two and a half by three and a half inches. This woman sits center stage is all dressed to the nines with a corsage on her shoulder, earrings, stockings and heels. However the setting is more seemingly casual with wooden folding chairs. There are plants on the window and a fence with trees beyond it. A bit more of the outside might be a clue to where she is (at best I just see some leafy treetops) although it is an event or a visit somewhere special clearly.

Of course I purchased it because of the somewhat off-model and presumably homemade Felix on the shade behind her. Felix stands hands (paws?) on hips, elbows out. He’s a very angular Felix, with an oversized head and a smile. His tail appears sort of mid-leg at an odd angle, although for cat-a-tude they seem to have gotten him right.

Felix’s image is surprisingly enduring. Consider that the height of his popularity was in the 1920’s to find folks still painting his image on some blinds somewhere in the world of the 1950’s is sort of an odd and interesting thought. Like his competition Mickey Mouse the grip of his image has held fast for many subsequent decades. Leaves me wondering what has been produced subsequently that will have legs as long, hard to beat the famous cat and mouse.

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As you read this I will be off to New Jersey for a few days of winterizing chores for the house there. My dahlias are still blooming so I won’t be taking them in yet, but the heat filters will be changed and the irrigation system turned off. Pumpkins and mums are already out on the steps but I intend to enjoy my fall garden for a few days. (Tune into Instagram for dahlia update!) See you next week!

Reine Eymard – Cat Impersonator!

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: Ongoing readers know that I have been on something of an animal impersonator role lately! It was true synchronicity when I saw this hit a favored account on Instagram (@Marsh.and.Meadow) during a casual scroll stroll. I snatched it up – my head was still full of last week’s post where Steven Phillips (@woodenhillstoys) shared his whacky and wonderful poster of a cat imitator. (That post can be found here.) And here was yet another photo of a cat imitator – my first French entry. (Animal imitators abound here at Pictorama and a few other posts are here and here.)

Subsequently Steven showed me where that imitator was named J. Hurst – to date I cannot find any information about him, aside from his stint for Black Cat Cigarettes. I am sorry to report that Reine Eymard appears to be equally lost to the sands of time. My own Pictorama posts are the only items I find!

A sister perhaps? Royet, Hyacinthe. “Eldorado Aimée Eymard”. Lithographie couleur. entre1880-et-1900. Paris, musée Carnavalet.

There is an Aimee Eymard who appears to be a contemporaneous performer (chanteuse) and I wonder if it is a sister. There is scant information about her as well however. Just a couple of posters. It’s fun to think about sisters on the same bill in France of 1890 – one in a cat outfit and the other a singer! Perhaps the cat sang too. Me-ow!

Sadly I cannot decode the date that this was mailed from the canceled stamp that is on the front of this card. The back is covered with writing, in French. It is of note that this particular card appears to have sold on eBay recently. Clearly I wasn’t doing my work well and if I had I would have paid a tad less – still, just happy it landed here at Pictorama.

Am open to further translations!

The text on the back roughly seems to translate as, My Dear Cante, I hope this finds you well. Since you left something about mother and a bad head cold and bad weather. I hope it will be fine and it will ruin things if everyone gets it. With love, Gaby L.H. Weirdly, although it has a canceled stamp I do not see an address so no idea how it was sent.

Reine’s full hair barely fits under her cat ear hat and she looks coyly out at the viewer. Her hands curled into faux claw paws. Her cat hat has huge whiskers and somewhat googly eyes. Her flowing gown has some colored highlights added and falls almost entirely off one shoulder. She looks like a real handful – one can only just imagine that act!

I am a bit amazed that nothing comes up on the internet when I search these performers – no posters, no theatrical listings. For now, except for these photos, they are really lost in the cracks of time.

A Sprightly Black Cat

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: For those of you who read yesterday’s post, you know that this little kitty came to me from Great Britain via an Instagram post where I spotted him in a flea market display. It was the first time I purchased something from @woodenhillstoys via Instagram, but I deeply suspect not the last. He caught my eye at the same time as the Louis Wain doily (yesterday’s post), on a shelf on the same table.

This kitty is tiny, only about four inches from his nose to his curled up tail. He is velvet and sports a ratty ribbon, the same yellowish color as the velvet on his tummy. A red nose and mouth are a stitched star between glass ears with rounded ears. Still, it is his sort of splayed leg stance, arched back and curled tail that catch your eye and give him his cat-titude. A tiny hole in the tip of his tail reveals a bit of straw stuffing. He is a prime example of less is more.

A closer look at this little addition.

Meanwhile, in the process of the sale, the seller Steven Phillips (@woodenhilltoys) shared a rather extraordinary piece he recently acquired for his own collection. For those of you who are regular Pictorama readers you may remember several posts devoted to animal imitators – dogs and, of course, cats. (Some of those prior Pictorama posts can be found here, here and here.) While I wouldn’t say that the Brits owned this occupation, they are definitely in competition with the us in this narrow area of expertise and this is a grand example.

Steven Phillips cat impersonator poster.

I just about fell over! Shown here in a glorious poster size in his cat suit with a small image of him, sans suit up in the corner. I pulled this off of Instagram where he direct messaged it to me. I love that he has himself perched on this illustration of a rooftop with neatly tended fields in the distance. The cat costume is notably comical. A note in the corner says, Elite Photo Co., Glasgow, Scotland.

A wowza of weirdness in this close-up.

A Google Image search tells me that this gent in his cat suit was in ads for Black Cat Cigarettes and I have grabbed a few images shown here. (One is a Getty Image with its watermark.) I cannot seem to get the name of the performer in question. Clearly he is a rather inspired imitator and his devotion did not go unrecognized.

Black Cat Cigarettes, it goes almost without saying, had a long and storied series of ad campaigns featuring black cats – both real, drawn and clearly imitated as well. (For a post highlighting a notable item of their advertising in my collection have a read here.)

Black Cat Cigarette ad I found online. I love the two mugs who are driving!

Oddly this came up the first time I put it in Google Images but not subsequently. AI had all sorts of weird answers for me when asked!

So a real hats off to Steven Phillips (and my thanks for allowing me to share the images) for a real hotsy totsy find! I have a feeling this won’t be the last we hear about the lore of this particular cat impersonator and we at Pictorama will be looking.

Moonlight Serenade

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: This fetching and fluffy feline caught my eye recently. This card is a bit later than the majority of cards in my collection and was sent on September 9, 1933. A woman named Agnes sent it from Whinchmore Hill to Miss Connie Connors at 63, Park Av. Park Estate, (can’t read the town) Northumberland for a penny.

Agnes writes simply, Dear Connie, It seems ages since I have heard anything about you all. Hope you are well. Lots f love, Agnes xxxxxxxx. Presumably it is Connie who had and kept this card to make it down the decades.

And I ask, who wouldn’t have kept this card? This little fellow is caught mid-meow posed on a faux brick wall for this purpose. In some ways it is the evocative bright moon scenery behind him that really does it for me. At the bottom in a script font it reads, A moolight serenade and W. & K. 1592. W&K postcards is the logo for Wildt & Kray, London. The company was founded in 1905 and was active into the 20’s publishing postcards of several genres but most notably cats – including Louis Wain.

Therefore if this card is postmarked 1933 (which it clearly is) it was either a bit old at that time or had been reprinted and distributed somehow subsequently. (Therefore the esthetic appeal to me makes sense since it was likely made before 1925 or so.) You can see it a bit above, weirdly the postmark machine has come through and embossed half this card.

Back of card.

I am glad I have not lived in a time and place where caterwauling is a nightly event. As a cat lover on the rare occasion I have heard it, and the likely fight that might follow I have found it hard to ignore. Just a cat meowing outside will of course garner my attention. Not that I would ever have thrown shoes at them – and not that I can imagine that would do any good.

In this mature period of her life Cookie (age 13) has become very chatty. She demands our attention, especially in the morning, with long, complex cat sentences. This is generally combined with a certain amount of staring (you human fool! why don’t you do as I ask?) and some rolling and stretching and expectation of tummy rubbing. (Cookie is the tummy rubbing-est cat I ever met! Growing up a cat would just bite you if you tried to rub its tummy, but oddly Cookie demands it.)

This leads me to a topic which may require more examination in a later post but there is a movement afoot on the internet where people are teaching their cats to “talk” using buttons spread across the floor. Of course, living in a tiny apartment in New York my first thought was, man, these people have space to spare and waste! Once I got over that, I started following a few people on Instagram who document their interactions ongoing.

To aide your cat or small dog in being a Chatty Cathy!

As far as I can tell one chooses word buttons and spreads them out on the floor and trains kitty to step on the appropriate one to converse. Obviously word choice is limited and a sort of pigeon English (if you pardon the term) emerges. Of course my friends at Chewy sell them but I have no real sense of how popular this trend is.

The account I watch most is a science fiction writer named Alice with a calico cat named Elsie (@elsiewants). Alice says she introduced button talking as something for a novel she was working on and thought her cat would better be able to tell her what toy she wanted to play with. Instead she seems to have gotten a Demanda Kitty (something we call Cookie occasionally) who appears to embody exactly what I always imagined cats would say if they could talk. It is sort of feline trash talking, a series of what she does and does not like and mostly what she wants.

There are companies like Fluent Pet that sell the buttons, lodged in brightly colored mats like those you see in a kid’s playroom. The companies have training instructions (do you want to talk to a cat or a dog?) and of course there are videos online to help. The real question we have to ask is, do we actually want to hear more about what they have to say?

Cookie not really asleep this morning. Do you really want to know what this cat has to say?

As much as I adore Cookie and Blackie, I’m not sure there is much to improve our relationship by giving them more control over the daily demands they already make. Although maybe a diabetic Blackie could communicate better about his sugar levels, too easily I can imagine Cookie pressing the same button again and again – and Blackie always insisting he hates Cookie. I have to say, this might be one area where ignorance is bliss and we shall not go.

British Bright Lights

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: I was on a bit of a role recently with press photos on eBay. (See last week’s Felix-y post here.) I had to barter over this one a bit but it seemed to fit nicely within my purview of photo interests. This came to me via a dealer in Livingston, Texas.

On the back it is identified as a photo by Underwood and Underwood a stock photo company located at 242 West 55th Street here in New York City. On a scrap of paper glued to the back, NOVEL ELECTRIC SIGNS FEATURED AT BRITISH SEASIDE RESORT. LONDON. –PHOTO SHOWS: “Mickey Mouse” and the “Dancing Kittens” in electric lights at Blackpool. There was something below it that was neatly ripped off.

The candy shown here with Felix was sometimes referred to as Blackpool Rock. Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.

Blackpool beach resort has been the locale of numerous Pictorama posts as a rather specific Felix wooden cut out was available for photos and even one errant donkey. (A mere sampling of posts can be found here, here and here.) Blackpool as a seaside resort goes back to the 18th century. There is what they refer to as the Blackpool Tower and Pleasure Beach which appears to be an amusement pier, probably not unlike the small one in Long Branch, NJ I grew up with but maybe larger since it was referred to as the Golden Mile as well. It reached its zenith of popularity around the time of this photo and although tourism has fallen off still exists largely intact today.

Posing with Felix in Blackpool. Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.

I’m not sure who the brain child was behind this off-model Mickey and tow dancing kitties in what appear to be lederhosen and bow ties. The cats have luxurious tails that curl around and are clad in black boots. Mickey, on the other hand, while sporting an outsized bow tie had oddly small feet in some sort of white shoes.

Unfortunately the tops of Mickey’s ears are lost to the black sky behind him – Kim suggested a bit of white paint to rectify that. I am a bit surprised it wasn’t painted on for publication. I do wonder about publicizing what was so clearly a homemade Mickey in newspapers. Did the long arm of Walt reach them?

Another Blackpool Felix photo. Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.

All three are decorated in round white bulbs. They drift in front of something made to look like a fence. I thought it was a real fence at first but it is dotted with lights too. Oddly enough the cat’s booted feet do not seem to have bulbs.

Information on the back of the photo.

There is a tiny sign affixed to the bottom which says, DANGER Do not touch. I can only imagine that now it would have to be much, much bigger. There are shadows along the back fence that look strangely like black cats to me. The bulbs in the white areas of the cats and Mickey’s face look lit up under careful examination – but the lights on their pants and bows do not appear to be. Perhaps they blinked – maybe half are on and half off?

Of course my imagination goes wild with the idea of a day and an evening at Blackpool – getting my photo taken with Felix on the beach first and then seeing this at night! I am probably delightedly eating cotton candy and other junk food in the interim. A perfect day at the British seashore resort.