animals

Paul Pilz

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: I am taking a break from holiday influenced item posts (but evidently still devoted to dogs), to bring you an item I purchased at an odd venue last weekend. An ad on Instagram for an Oddities Flea Market (@odditiesfleamarket) caught my eye and on a whim I paid for tickets for Kim and I to go. I knew most of it would not be of interest to me, but I figured that maybe 25-30% of the vendors might be interesting. The line to enter (even with tickets) went down West 18th Street at the Metropolitan Pavilion and evidently it is an annual affair with a devoted following I have just never heard of previously.

The percentage of Pam’s Pictorama type vendors was perhaps a tad lower than 25%, but black cat items sort of did have a big moment there and I ended up making a not insignificant number of purchases in the end – and could easily have spent even more. One thing that got away at this table was an old orange ceramic cat that lit up. It had already been broken and repaired and I would say the ability to get it to light up seemed dubious, but in the end it just seemed too fragile to come live here at Deitch Studio. Still, I imagine that it must have a great orange glow if you could get it working. Anyway, you will be the beneficiaries of those interesting tidbits I did buy in coming weeks and this is the first of them I am sharing.

This photo postcard came from a vendor who had a nice little cache of black cat and other interesting items. After shelling out for some bigger items I pawed through some excellent (and reasonably priced) boxes of photo postcards. I plucked out two, and Kim one, and today I share the first of them now.

A quick search of Paul Pilz turns up a fairly thorough blog post on him which can be found here. I have nicked this other photo of Pilz from that site. It is a larger shot of him but very similar.

Alternate version of the same publicity photo, seems like this one was used pre-War however – not in Pictorama.com collection.

I won’t endeavor to repeat what that post has to say, but between that site and AI I learned that Pilz was evidently part of a traveling troupe on what is described as very small stages with a dog act, accompanied by him on the trumpet and doing comedy. This popular act ultimately morphed into one where he was a featured performer entertaining the German troops during WWI. (Wanderfheafer Armee Abf. A. on this card – they were already an army headliner. I shudder in horror some indeed at the idea of what traveling with a troop of dogs entertaining troops during WWI might have been like although for the dogs it might have been the best of gigs and options.)

Although I generally collect images of animal imitators (some posts on those can be found here and here for starters) I do have a sub-genre of photos that feature acts (here is one of several) and these seem to belong here too.

There was a recent article in the New York Times about a dog act at the Big Apple Circus (at this time it can be found here, entitled The Show Stealing Dogs of the Big Apple Circus) and so I had a moment recently to contemplate the treat filled world of dog tricks. I like the part where the trainer says if they mess up (balk at jumping through a hoop for example) he just makes it part of the act.

From the NYT article, performing pups.

Years ago Kim took me to a cat circus (Russian) performing downtown here in New York. I even had my photo taken with the ringmaster – for a price of course. I loved it! The photo hangs on an overflowing corkboard near our computer where a drawing of Kim (by Dave Collier’s son who visited about a year ago), something about Carter De Haven and an long ago article on a nascent Ugly Betty cover it. I wanted to pet the kitties which was, understandably, not encouraged. From the perspective of having seen that, I will say, cats or dogs, performing is a treat filled activity and I can only assume it is the rigorous work outs that keep the animals trim.

Under his name it says, roughly translated, with self-written repertoire – I guess a way of saying original gags? It declares Humor at the top, in case the photo didn’t alert you. The sort of masked characters on either side of that are a bit terrifying. Urns of flowers are on either side and a decorative bow tied image of him make up this card.

In the photo he presents a comical character with his trumpet, and his dog in his arms held like a baby. He looks at the dog and the pup looks out at the camera. I’m not sure but this photo may have been artificially put together from two – it doesn’t quite fit as a real image. I’m not sure I can entirely follow the concept of a dog act driven by trumpet playing. It sounds – loud!

This card is a bit tatty but was never mailed, no writing on the back and therefore no date certain, except that it clearly was during the war. I wonder if these were given out to troops when they were performing – and how strange that if so it has survived all these years just to land here in December of New York City of 2025 and find its way to the Pictorama library.

Dog Show

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: Today’s card showed up while I was looking for holiday gifts for a few staffers – it was a gift fail so to speak. I never would have found it however, if I had not been searching around in dog photos on eBay, where I generally do not belong.

Some of you more longstanding readers might remember its sister card shown below which I wrote about all the way back in 2016. At the time it was a hotly contested card which I had lost and subsequently won as outlined in that post which you can read here. Obviously that one turned up in my feed because of the cat reference.

Pam’s Pictorama.com Collection. From a previous post.

While these two cards are definitely of a piece, the Dog Show sign is definitely the same, there are some differences. While I am fairly certain this is the same woman and dog (same Dog Show sign) she is wearing a different outfit in each. The Cat Show Next card is entitled Beastly Affairs.

However, most notably the Cat Show Next card has a different, patterned floor, the other one is a plain wood. A very careful look (lower right corner) shows that the copyright for these two cards is a year apart with the cat version being earlier by a year, 1907 although my copy of that card was mailed in 1909. So did it prove so popular they brought out this variation the next year? I wonder if there are more.

Today’s card is called Going to the Dogs. Unlike the earlier card, this one has writing on the back although no stamp or evidence of mailing so I don’t know when the writing, in pencil, was added. To the best of my ability to read it, it says, Bascom this is Ednice Jain. Look good & she has gone to the Dogs good – Ha Ha Ha. She is a Dog catcher & not 1/2 as good as one. An odd note, no name signing it.

I prefer the earlier card somewhat and it is more than the cat show reference. The composition with the additional sign is a bit better and somehow holding the dog, and even the patterned floor, make it more dynamic. She has a bit of a smile in the first shot and a hat full of flowers – the hat in today’s card notably appears to have a whole bird on it. She wears a different fur trimmed jacket in both.

Unidentified card online with a Pitbull and similar woman but not the same series.

The card was made here in New York City by the Rotograph Company but printed in England, oddly enough. A quick search online does not turn up more cards in the series, but neither does it tie these two cards out to each other. I don’t even find more copies of either of them online, however above I have shared one that turns up that could almost be in the series.

My colleague will now get a card from 1908 with a big footed puppy, vaguely reminiscent of his own recently acquired little fellow. I will dig out my copy of the other card and a find a place to install them side by side, either here or in New Jersey. They make too a good story together to break apart.

What’s Up

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: A flurry of purchases for holiday gifts is commencing and, although there may be one or two readers from the animal hospital who check in over here, I’m pretty sure I am safe posting this particular one in advance of giving it. My work gifts are largely of the canine kind – I must admit that my office is far heavier in pup than kit and therefore dogs are having their day once again here at Pictorama.

Those who have followed me in the years since I left Jazz for the animal hospital know that, especially for a devoted cat person, I now spend a lot of time with dogs. (In fact our annual Top Dog Gala where we celebrate a dog, class of dogs and/or supporter of the hospital’s non-profit mission, is Tuesday. A post about my first Top Dog can be found here. As these events go, dogs do make it a lot more fun!)

An early fall update was doggie indeed and I shared photos of our Paws & Pints event and perhaps our canine concert. (That can be found here.) Puppies and working Guide Dogs populated a Woof & Wine for the younger set interested in our work. So this cat woman is doing a lot of belly rubs and good boys with a whole new crowd. Seven cats means it is unlikely that there is a dog in our immediate future at Deitch Studio, but then again, you never know.

My first Top Dog back in December of ’23.

Meanwhile, as the holidays approach I have applied my same searching rules and know how to finding something to fit and personal to each of those recipients. (Last year I luckily stumbled on a number of small vintage prints of various kinds which made up about half the group.) In my shopping and searching I set a fairly low ceiling on the cost so it took a while for price and aesthetics to come together.

Really, I got lucky pretty fast and this card, mailed back in March of 1908, was one I could just purchase. (Another is on its way to me for a colleague who just got a puppy – his first pet in a number of years. He is a musician and almost got early canine related sheet music but the card I found for him looks like an early 20th century version of his pup!)

In this process I should admit that one photo has come to stay (an occupational hazard – more on that one in a future post) and I thought this one rated the Pictorama treatment. In this card a big footed fellow appears here in straw boater and spiffy collar better suited for a summer outing for the 4th of July than Christmas. A quick search tells me that this image was first distributed in 1906. The ultimate recipient of this card has smaller dogs but I think will like this early guy’s style.

Although it is postmarked March 5, 1906 I cannot read the location of the cancellation. It was sent to Miss Marion Deverance in Durant Okla Box 598 without a message; I guess they felt the card spoke for itself? It’s a simple image in black and white, really just depending on the props for the pup and also the sweet and somewhat urgent look in his eyes. This little fellow wants to please the person behind the camera – perhaps one holding a treat?

I amaze a bit at the difference between dogs and cats as I spend time with them these days. It’s pretty universal that cats hate going to the vet and the best you can hope for is one that doesn’t howl, or in the extreme, bite. Dogs are a mixed bag. Some seem (not all to be sure) to honestly be happy to enter our doors and see their doctor friends. Others are at least resigned as long as they are with mom or dad. There are some who, like the felines, just aren’t having it.

In general though, dogs are so much more social and enjoy participation in the world with their people in a way cats just cannot. I have had some success planning dog friendly events over these past two years. Finding establishments that can and will welcome dogs has been one of the interesting challenges. Our annual Living Legends luncheon typically honors a dog, cat and exotic animal setting the bar for that location even higher. (Bearded dragon welcome?) Meanwhile, we have a parrot joining its mom at our Gala next week, a moveable perch needed to be found for it so that it could join in some photo sessions. Again, this is a very different job! (For your information and in case you need one, Amazon had the perch.)

There are a smattering of dog friendly bars and restaurants uptown near me. Interesting to note that NYC parks are not especially friendly to dog gatherings, although the individual conservancies are willing the Parks Department gives us a thumbs down. I worked for Central Park for several years and am well aware of their leash laws but these have not been requests to have dogs off leash, just gatherings where people could bring them.

My hardbound copy of this book. I bought a bunch of paperbacks to give as thank you gifts this year at work.

Obviously fund raising for an animal hospital raises specific and different challenges from my years at Jazz and before that decades at the Metropolitan Museum. In some ways I am uniquely prepared with my deeply devoted pet past and present. And it’s not all about dogs – donors to a new cat fund for needed emergency surgeries has received May Sarton’s book, The Fur Person which I wrote about in a post that can be found here.

I hope my colleagues will like their canine cards and other holiday treats and that next year, my third, further indicates that I am getting the hang of this fundraising for animals thing right.

Everything’s Swell!

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: It’s impossible for me to see this card without hearing a certain sort of cartoon cat voice from my childhood – vaguely sarcastic, probably based on a motion picture idea of what a citified gangster sounded like. His friend and sidekick would reply, Yeah, right boss!

This is among the last of the cards I bought at the big postcard show over the summer. (Never fear, there’s another show coming in early October.) This card looks like it could have been drawn by one of those cartoon animators as a side gig. It has a pro feeling to it. The cat on the fence with the big orange sun setting – a glowing sunset behind the fence we realize when we really look. We get a peek at a yellow field and a house behind. It is as if the world is very beautiful glowing yellow and civilized just on the other side of the fence from where these three cats gather.

The two males on the fence seem to be tuning up for a night of caterwauling, while the girl cat belongs to someone who has place a bow around her neck. I guess she matriculates through both worlds. There is a garbage can which has overflowed – I guess that can be investigated and raided later if the boys need a snack.

Blackie and Cookie on the bed recently. They have only just reconciled with each other upon our return to the NYC apartment.

Not surprisingly it has me in mind of what we called alley cats when I was a kid and which occurs to me right now to be a term you don’t really hear any longer. (Do we no longer have alleys? Or are cats no longer their denizens?) Instead we talk about strays and feral cats – terms people seem to use interchangeably which arguably are not. Domestic cats that have been abandoned are now strays but they are not feral.

I have written about our first stray found when I was a small child, Zipper. (I wrote about him and other tabbies I have known in a post here. Zipper’s interest in our tropical fish can be found here.) He was a classic alley cat, a tabby with a broken tail where the tip was always at an angle. Mom rescued him outside the laundry one day (this was before we had our own washer and dryer – yes, we’re talking quite a long time ago) where some boys were abusing him.

Zipper was super scrappy though and grew into a beautiful cat. I suspect in retrospect that our rather prim but gentle domestic cat Snoopy was probably utterly shocked by him. He kept his streetwise wits about him and became a ringleader of the neighborhood cats of the time. (Our cats were of the indoor/outdoor variety at the time.) Zips would round up his buddies and make raids on an eel box kept for bait up the street. What pussycat parties those appeared to be! Puking for days after and a need to hose down the garage. These two on the card would have happily attended and then gotten into a few fights.

Mr. Miltie, our old, old timer. A long ago rescue from Newark.

Spending time outside our cats would get into scraps and occasionally come home with a gaping wound which would eventually abscess and require a trip to the vet. Once I remember my mother couldn’t find a cat carrier and stuffed Zipper into a picnic basket which he promptly chewed right through – head sticking out and therefore somewhat stuck, on our the way there.

All of this was brought back to me by a snippet on Instagram this morning about a British woman and her son finding a cat in the backyard and enticing him inside over a period of a couple of years. Reminds me of our Hobo in New Jersey who we never were able to get inside and who disappeared last year. They call him Boysie, another tabby, and it was a bad wound that finally made them urge him inside and to the vet.

Gus, on the bed. He came to the backdoor in NJ one winter. He can’t decide if he wants to be petted all the time or is afraid to at all.

Now we have dedicated people doing TNR (trap, neuter and release) of cat colonies which have mercifully cut down their numbers. Strays with docked ears show this has been done and our Stormy bears that evidence. Here in Manhattan strays are much less common than they once were even in my lifetime. Still, Stormy and Gus both came to the backyard at Mom’s and the other three were otherwise rescued, Beau and Miltie from Newark and Peaches from a basement in Long Branch. We know that shelters are full to overflowing and I am told that in the spring a never ending parade of kittens were dropped at our doors at work despite our not even being a shelter.

Recently an older friend lost her sister unexpectedly and the sister had just adopted a stray. I was very tempted to invite her to join the tribe although eight might truly be the tipping of that scale.

Peaches. I actually touched her for the first time recently. She was asleep on a chair and did not appreciate it. Peaches will generally only let me get within a foot or two of her. Still, she seems very happy. Stretches and rolls around. Just a no-touch kinda girl.

I think of our cat companions and how very special they are. Cookie is asleep atop a Chewy box surveying her kingdom as I write and Blackie is wondering if he looks longingly enough I will give him a Churu treat. (I am the soft touch for these and secretly am always trying to put a bit more weight on Blackie. He is a willing participant.) It makes me sad to think of those kitties that could have happy lives in homes but don’t get the chance. Here’s to finding them all their very best homes.

The Three Month Mark

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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.

New

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: Seems impossible to write about anything else while my mind is so full of the first few days at the new job so here I go. As some of you know, I have only ever had a handful of first days at jobs in my adult life. (Meaning beyond the days when someone handed me a uniform or an apron and said have at it in high school and college!) Since one of the few was returning to the Met after an absence of two years and doesn’t really count, I am inexperienced at this for someone my age and who has worked continuously for decades.

Frosty view on my way to work on day 1. It has been in the teens and/or snowing all week!

When you leave one place and go to another you shed much of your day-to-day expertise about who does what and how things are done. I remember at Jazz there was a bi-weekly meeting that was held to discuss Wynton’s calendar and upcoming events and for the first couple of months I just sat there marveling at how I had no idea in the least what they were talking about. You lose the place where you got coffee in the morning, not to mention where lunch could be found.

At my new gig it is the discussions around oncology and neurology for kits and pups and a surgical floor opening that flummox me somewhat. I have seen a new MRI for small animals (I gather we are more or less the only game in town for this) and I have chatted with an angry orange Maine Coon cat who was waiting his turn for radiation. While kitty was very mad, next to him was a pup whose tail wagged continuously despite his circumstances when he heard our voices. Dogs, for whatever reason, make up the larger lion’s share of our practice. I can already say a lot of dogs get attacked while being walked. Be careful out there folks!

The first weeks require wandering around looking for the necessities of life – where to grab lunch, a drugstore, a post office. Considering we are in Manhattan you would think these are on every corner, but the animal hospital is perched near the river and the on and off ramp for the FDR highway. Much in addition to us is under construction and it is an island of traffic and construction, the amenities of life are at least a block away.

The origin of the Animal Medical Center, downtown, back in 1914.

By its very nature, as an animal emergency medical center and the only Trauma 1 center for animals in the area, it is a place that must look constantly forward. Having said this, it is housed in a building from the early 1960’s that we are renovating while still going full tilt. I too was built in the early 1960’s and I think both of us are showing our age. Luckily for the animals (and all of us) the hospital is in the final phase of a massive renovation of said building. Unlike a museum, a hospital has to stay open and fully operational during its renovation and space will be tight for almost another year. Our cramped quarters and the valiant unfailing efforts of the docs inspires me to get in there and raise some money to help finish the job.

As a result my team and a smattering of other folks are camped out in a block away which makes it hard to immerse myself in the life of the place although frequent trips in and out are helping to permeate my consciousness. Meanwhile my team doesn’t really exist in a place where I can easily gather them, although I am doing my best to perch among them on and off and pepper them with questions. My first few days were a morass of equipment that wasn’t quite working with passwords that needed to be established and a persistent problem with sound on my computer which I believe we finally resolved late Friday. This is what first days of work in the 21st century are made up of I guess.

Unlike Jazz, which had moved back to working entirely in person, I am back to a combination of online meetings and fewer in-person ones. I feel I have lost the cadence of working that way and am struggling to regain the skill set even once my equipment is functional.

If I had a window my view might be close to something like this of the 59th Street bridge and Roosevelt Island tram.

My new digs are pleasant enough. We are on the East River and while I have no windows skylights add some natural light to my office. (I have been warned by the pathologist next to me that they leak however – her microscope is covered.) There is a pile of fluffy dog beds in one corner from our recent Gala and I admit on a chilly late afternoon it is tempting to pull one out and curl up like a Great Dane in one.

My boxes of files and personal office effects have yet to arrive so it is a bit sterile for now and I twitch for files that aren’t there as I start to think about materials that need to be produced. It will seem more like home once I am fully installed, hopefully in the coming week. Despite the internet I still keep a dictionary and a thesaurus on my shelf and a few other office touchstones from my past – although I let go of the actual rolodex years ago after moving that around a couple of times.

Large fluffy dog beds are tempting. There’s a bag of cat toys too in case I get bored.

Some readers know that there’s always a Chinese lucky waving cat in my office to help attract money. I will definitely feel better once he is back on the job. (I wrote about my affinity for these in a post here.) I could use his reassuring tick, tick. I may need to bring one from home if there’s going to be a delay! No one has invested themselves in the space though, despite having been there for years and the likelihood of at least a year ahead. I hope for my team my being firmly grounded there brings them some measure of comfort. I like to take root in a space wherever I am. I like my stuff.

One in a series of lucky waving cat statues.

Because our space is open at the ceiling and we are crammed in together I cannot play music in my office, but Radio Dismuke is still on my earphones daily. (I wrote recently about finding this now beloved radio station online and posted about it here.) I am just getting to know the few existing members of my team and they are friendly if a bit wary. I have interviews with potential staff to fill existing positions already set up for this week.

So that’s the state of me as my first few days at the new job draw to a close. Much more about this adventure to come. Thank you for those readers who tuned in!