cat collection

A Joyous Halloween

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: I am a bit late this morning – slept in to try to nix a nascent head cold and then went down the rabbit hole of some other responsibilities. However, now that I am getting geared up, I thought I would cheer us all up with a Halloween entry as that spook-a-thon is now a week away.

Halloween is cheerfully embraced where I work these days and not only do folks dress up but there is a much-vaunted contest by department. There was interest in the administrative folks on my floor banding together, but it turns out that my staff to a one is Halloween adverse. Funny, I seem to meet a lot of people these days who do not see the charm in the holiday. Europeans tend to find our version a bit over the top and I can understand that if you didn’t grow up here – but I am a bit surprised at how many people are just like, yep no thanks on Halloween. Personally, a day when I can at least throw on my cat ears and maybe a tail is a good one. Not to mention the glory of black cat merchandise that the holiday is responsible for producing.

Today’s postcard is an embossed and shiny gold trimmed one with a black cat driving a grinning (leering) jack-o-lantern cart of sorts which is fueled by six captive rodents (I am voting rats here as they are in reality the same size as the cat), with the lead fellow looking particularly chipper and come hither, standing on his hind legs.

The cat has a long and curling (rat tail like?) whip he is playing. He sports some sort of sash across him and a smart top hat. No smiling task master this though – he is baring his teeth in a snarly grimace. In addition, he displays claw paws, a tail in somewhat of a state of alarm and so many, many whiskers!

A single star appears over a smiling moon rising. Pink clouds are a nice contrast over blue ones and a darkening blue sky. There is a town with some towers of sorts in the distance, behind trees. The best for me is the checkered gold design at the top and bottom.

Our jack-o-lantern cart is also a bit malevolent. Eyes are rolling upward and his carved grin is a bit sharply snaggle toothed. It casts a blue shadow and runs on little red painted wheels. It should be noted that the mechanics of it have not been ignored and one can see where the rats are secured to it in numerous spots. The gold trim, still in good shape, shines over the whole card creating a play of highlights.

This card was never mailed and there is nothing written on the back. A small maker’s mark (an SB) indicates that this was made by Solomon Brothers who appear to have specialized in a line of holiday cards at the dawn of the last century.

Meanwhile, I had a mousie encounter the other day. I had a very early morning workout with my trainer (via zoom) in our basement gym here. I was pretty sleepy and as my eyes began to focus, I realized that what I thought was a particularly large dust bunny (our building not really notable for its gym cleanliness), was in actuality a fat, gray mouse perched on top of the mats hanging on the wall. While generally a friend to most animals (for some reason I am a bit iffy on crocodiles) it doesn’t mean that the sight of a mouse doesn’t generally send me to standing on a chair and screaming in a good imitation of Olive Oyl.

I managed to keep my (relative) cool and decided that we could co-exist for the hour as long as we maintained our own space. This was ultimately achieved, although he did flick his tail a few times. I didn’t have the heart to report the tiny fellow to the powers that be, after all he was just trying to get in out of the cold I guess. On the other hand, I hope he isn’t waiting for me still when I go down later today.

Quite Pleasant

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: Today is a Louis Wain card I picked up the other day, a bargain due to the small hole and damage in the upper left corner. I imagine it hung on a wall maybe? Odd spot for just one hole. Nonetheless, it is fine for our enjoyment here at Pictorama.

Regular readers know I have a bit of a fascination with what it would be like to be using and receiving such cards on a daily basis. Maybe after a dinner party or gathering you might receive this one with a note on the back as a thank you. (Don’t even get me started on the dearth of thank you notes written now – I mean I would take them by email but gosh! Saying thank you is a dying art.)

It was quite pleasant is in script at the top, the sort of note Wain seemed to favor on this series of cards. I wonder how he did it – it appears to be his handwriting but somehow, I don’t think it was on the original art for example. (For similar Louis Wain cat cards you can find posts here and here for starters.) Two very different cat couples are enjoying themselves in a gently festive atmosphere. An odd sort of fluffy standing lamp almost looks like a hat on this lady cat, sporting a big blue bow and holding a pink fan in her paw hand.

She and the gent bringing a hot drink are making eye contact. He has more sort of collar on, green. His green eyes match and her blue eyes match her bow. The whiskers and eyebrows of all the cats stand out very straight. All four are brown tabbies, three browns and a gray. The pair smiles at each other and they both have white spots on their chest and tummies as well as sort of a white star in their faces. They are a sweet next-door-neighbor kind of couple.

There is a long bench they are all seated in front of and sort of potted ferns as a background behind them. The other cat couple is where things get a bit more Wain. There is something a bit racier about that gray striped girl with the big red bow slightly askew. Her nose and mouth a bit redder than the others, yellow eyes. She (somehow) holds a fan in a paw we cannot see while Mr. Brown Tabby appears to have an arm around her. She looks like a party girl! Meanwhile, Mr. Brown Tabby has a bit of a leer, like he is having some thoughts that would not bear sharing. His smirk and sideways look at her say it all.

Fair to say a good time, if a somewhat different time, was had by all. One thing I find a bit odd is that the gray girl and boy with the cup and saucer both have oddly short tails – I assume this was a sort of foreshortening but there is something a bit off about it. In addition to the ferns, there is a decorative screen of the type I think might have been popular at the time. There is a sort of screwy abstract design in the pink, yellow and blue found elsewhere in the card.

This card was never sent so we are left to just imagine what parties it might have thanked hosts for in that long ago Victorian time. Louis Wain on the other hand, remains timeless.

Catskill

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: It is a crisp fall morning here in New York City and my mind is wandering to trees changing and the particular joys of this season on the east coast. I feel like trees have not really started to change yet in the city although maybe a stroll through Central Park will tell me differently. I remarked in New Jersey a few weekends ago on the absence of any leaf color yet. Having once worked for Central Park I know the variables required for the changing color of leaves is a specific rubric of cold air, snow the prior winter and rain since. Tricky business as to when and how much.

I have always loved the changing color of leaves in the fall (as does Kim who collects particularly interesting specimens on the streets of New York to share with me), but until I went to college I had not given much thought to people who had never lived with it. A friend from the west coast was fascinated by the leaves changing in Connecticut that first year which brought it home to me how special it is. Living in London a few years later I missed it. The leaves change there, but I guess but it didn’t feel the same, maybe living in a city for the first time. However, I made a quick trip to Berlin by happenstance and I remember that the leaves were turning and the yellow fall light was more like home. (It brought my grandparent’s home in Westchester to mind in particular for some reason.)

All this makes me daydream about a day trip upstate – pumpkins and fresh apple cider on tap. I doubt we will do it this year, various responsibilities tie us to Manhattan right now. And I should note that this card actually shows a summer vacation there. Nonetheless, it is bringing an autumn trip to my mind.

This card was purchased at an earlier iteration of the postcard show – maybe back last year. A vendor there specializes in Catskill cat cards, and I have bought several from her. (A few other Catskill postcard posts can be found here and here.) This one, sporting these two vacationeers in their jaunty outfits, made me laugh. I especially like that their hiking attire allows for tail visibility and maximum mobility – and that their sort of gaiters or hiking socks are perhaps that or more likely just the stripes of their tabby legs. Jaunty caps allow for expressive pointy ear movement as well. One cat gentleman has a walking stick and the other maybe binoculars, it is a bit indistinct. The one with the stick has a kerchief tied around his neck, while the other displays a sort of button down top – both are nice, belted jackets over walking length shorts or gaiters. This is some serious hiking attire for the early part of the 20th century.

Oddest of all though is this little pack cat trailing behind them. Although each of the anthropomorphic cats is carrying a case (which may be strapped across them?), this poor, smaller tabby kit has a pack and perhaps also a case strapped to his back. His paws somehow don’t quite touch the ground (was the artist thinking of horses and all feet off the ground at some point running?) giving him the appearance of floating or maybe hopping along behind them.

The front of a very early car pokes into sight at the bottom, a bright green. It has lines emanating from it which might mean it is a bit overheated – it doesn’t seem like those old round headlights are emitting the rays. Best of all however, there is a tiny mouse perched on the front of the car as hood ornament, a small comical detail.

Our gentleman cat hikers are on a path surrounded by evergreens which appear somewhat dwarfed to fit this scene. More green trees and mountains entice from the distance. At the top of the card it reads, Vacation Days, in the Catskills, N.Y. 229. This card was never mailed and the maker on the back is, C. W. Hughes & Co. Inc., Mechanicville, N.Y. and C. T. American Art Colored. No artist is credited. C.W. Hughes appears to have had a several decade but somewhat unimpressive run from about 1900 into the 1930’s. A local New York company as shown, not much notable is found about them.

I leave you with the October nip in the air and a desire for pumpkins, gourds, apples and the like. I will see how best I might scratch this particular itch before fall descends into the holidays and then winter. For those of you craving more, I share a link from a prior post trip up to Cold Spring a few years ago. It can be found here.

Cat and Mouse

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: On the front the sender wrote, Dear Mally, Please thank your mistress for her nice letter. Is the turtle dead yet? Be a good cat and don’t get a sun stroke this summer. Your loving friend. Greta.

It was this brief missive on the front which nudged me toward buying this card yesterday. It was mailed to, An “Mally” Care of Miss Anna Albertson, Magnolia, Camden Co., New Jersey. It is postmarked four (!) times, from Philadelphia at 1 AM, March 18, 1902; as an Exp. Letter with the markings Vevey, -9.V.02 -7, Exp. Lettr. (that one is repeated); and Magnolia, NJ and 1902 the rest is illegible. It is a good thing she didn’t try to do more than address the back of this card. The card was produced in Eastern Europe with maker’s information in several languages.

The card is lightly embossed in places – the cat’s eyes and paws and the mouse emerging. The drawing is nicely rendered and there is a house, a branch with some leaves, and a tree, peeping out behind the cat. This is a soft and friendly looking cat with a gentle glow in its eyes- who I might add isn’t actually really looking at the mouse and certainly not threatening it. The mouse looks equally congenial.

Cats can be funny about mice – and rodents in general, thinking rats here. In my life I have seen them eat dry cat food out of a bag side by side and I have also seen cats hunt rats and deliver a series of dead mice, moles and voles, to our doorstep growing up. One of the Jersey Five killed a mouse recently and left it near the front door – warning or gift. (It is hard to understand a mouse stupid enough to enter that house, yet we have visitors occasionally.) Our outside cat visitor, Hobo, was found eating a rat once.

Back of the card with four cancellations.

Much like humans, it is hard to understand the cat motivation and why they can be unpredictable this way. I attribute the recently deceased mouse at the house to Miss Peaches without having a way to know for sure. Female cats are often the hunters and she is quite feral. Still, virtually all of them lived on the street at one point and presumably it is one way they managed to eat. I always wonder when I see cats and rodents living together if someone shouldn’t be concerned that on a bad day the cat will just munch it?

Alas, meanwhile I wonder what was wrong with the poor turtle and its ultimate fate! Mally the cat must have liked to sunbathe in the extreme heat, hence the warning about sun stroke. This was written in March and so maybe dreaming a bit of summer days and a visit to come or one passed. Even the scene on the card looks a bit wintery. Camden and Philadelphia are not too far apart although I assume in 1902 getting from one to the other was a bit of an event and conceivably it was less urban than Philadelphia at the time.

So there you have the first of the haul from yesterday’s postcard show. Kim was a patient co-conspirator and helped me do some of the searching. It was not one of my most comprehensive purchases but a few gems to come.

Fickle Puss

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: It is a stormy Sunday here in Manhattan as I write this – day two of a Nor’easter which is huge and parked itself over the eastern seaboard.

It is especially wreaking havoc on my area of New Jersey it seems. I had planned to head down today but had rescheduled due to something other than the weather. However, now lots of flooding, the Asbury pier and boardwalk we were so recently on is covered by the swollen ocean for the moment and nearby places like Point Pleasant seem to have high tide water up to their doors and worse. (My Asbury Park post can be found here.) My dahlias are taking a beating and our basement pump may or may not be holding its own.

Orwashers was crowded yesterday morning when we went for our weekly order! It was a cozy haven in the storm.

Here in New York the apartment is cold (no heat yet!) and as a result we slept late under the warm blankets. Even when Blackie came to get us he was somewhat seduced by the warm sleepiness and curled up for a brief purr and pet.

With a Pictorama sort of logic I have chosen a Louis Wain card to cheer us up on this stormy weather day. The set up is a simple one but executed with pure Wain. Three tabby cats in a love triangle. The orange male who is evidently older, dropping both a cane and a pipe in shock as he looks on in dismay at what we assume is his wife cat. She is with her new paramour, a sporty gray tabby who uses an umbrella as a walking stick. He wears a natty bow and I must say, there’s something a little wicked in his smile. (She may regret this!) So enamored are they of each other that they don’t even see Mr. Orange Tom. The house in the background completes the story – our slick erstwhile gray tabby man is a homewrecker.

Back of the card.

The unnamed sender of this card appears to take advantage of the scene and gently tweaks, I shouldn’t have though you to have been so long without sending me a card. On the back it is addressed to, Master C. T. Travers, Woolfanger, Warlingham, Surrey. It was sent from London SW on March 20, 1905 at 12:15 AM. Not quite the sad tale of Wain’s cat woe, but still an appropriately chosen card. I assume it was to a child and that they would know immediately who would be writing this note from London. I’m sure he rushed to send a response and clearly this was kept somewhere safely since it has come down to us more than a hundred years later.

A new dahlia which waited to bloom for the first time when I wasn’t there! This bloom brought in before the storm and photo sent to me this morning.

The storm here continues apace – evidently into tomorrow. We ran some errands yesterday during a lull so I think we are positioned for a quiet day at home. Maybe some cleaning, lots of reading and perhaps a bit of cooking. I wish the same for all of you – especially those who are also in the line of this storm. Stay safe and have a cozy day if you can!

Vacation in the Air

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: Today is the first day of vacation. First thing this moring I wandered outside in my pj’s, admired the dahlias and some just emerging zinnias and popped a few ripe strawberries in my mouth while the coffee finished perking in the kitchen. I have fortified myself with one of my friend’s popover, provided earlier this week, and now I sit with my second cup of coffee (coffee so good this morning I texted a friend that I felt like I was swilling it) and share this new favorite card with you.

Strawberry plants offer a few nibbles every morning.

I purchased this postcard just before we left New York and it has just made its way here from Britain. I haven’t acquired one of these big kitty chair photos in a very long time. This cat chair is a bit smaller than some and sitting sidesaddle on him seems quite easy. My very favorite part is the way she is holding onto his (her?) little round cat ears!

The woman is wearing a white dress and sandals and she is dressed a bit differently than the general sort of togs we see in these holiday photos. (Early examples from my collection can be found in posts here, here and here for comparison.) The woman is smiling sort of placidly – a good sport but not embracing it quite as much as I think I might have given the opportunity. (I would have been bouncing with excitement!)

Meanwhile, Kitty is a bit bowlegged which gives him an especially cheerful look. He has a ribbon around his neck and a Steiff-y sewn on nose and mouth. We can barely see it, but kitty has a big fluffy tail up behind her. There is some vegetation in the background and what appears to be ivy climbing up a stone wall. This doesn’t have the seashore feel that some of these have and as I said before, this appears to be a somewhat smaller cat so likely a different location although obviously it is a resort area of sorts. This card was never mailed so we don’t have any sense of date or precise location. Oddly it has a narrow fold at the very top like maybe it was kept in a book and sticking out just the slightest bit.

not
The dahlias in the garden have either gone plumb wild or not come up. It’s an odd year.

I am savoring the delicious moment of my entire vacation stretching ahead of me. All things are possible at the beginning, and it is a cool morning here in New Jersey which beckons us outside. My dahlias are blooming and the red ones in particular are attracting my favorites, the hummingbirds. (I have not captured them in a photo and am unlikely to as they are so mercurial.) Evenings under the fairy lights are ahead as well as good food and friends visiting, cats to be fed and petted. More to come but enjoy this grand kitty chair for now.

Fishy Wain

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: I tossed this into a purchase pile recently as clearly somehow these are Wain or Wain-ish cats; however I would bet dollars to donuts that Louis never saw a payday for this one. However, having said that, I cannot easily locate another version of this image online, only one other copy of this card itself.

A few posts back I discussed the history of New York postcard producer Franz Huld and much to my surprise this morning, his credit runs along the side of the front of this card, Huld’s Correspondence Series No. 23 Franz Huld, Publisher, New York. (That post of an entertaining card about the Catskills, Hanging on the Moon, can be found here.)

Meanwhile, just yesterday Pictorama had a post about another innovative early postcard maker but in Germany. I think of that one as more of a high end (photomontages and trick photography) and our US friend Huld as sort of creatively low end if you will. (I am only on my first cup of coffee today so stay with me a bit.) Huld had a much briefer run in the business and never on a huge scale of production and maybe wasn’t above a bit of image thievery. Just a thought anyway because this card looks distinctly culled from something else and does not bear the Louis Wain signature nor credit however those are Wain cats.

This card was mailed but the postmark has been torn off therefore I cannot accurate date it. If I put it roughly at 1910, Huld is coming toward the end of his several years of production but still active and in upstate New York. However, the real smoking gun is that Wain was living and working in New York from 1907-1910, but only doing newspaper work. He was producing two newspaper strips, Cats About Town and Graymalkin. There is evidently no record of him producing postcards here. So my guess is that Huld lifted this image somehow from a newspaper illustration and craftily “repurposed” it.

One of the few images I could definitely tie out to this period of New York newspaper work. I do think there is some under-valued and interesting Wain work published in newspapers. While much of it was repurposed and collected, I have definitely seen work, mostly for sale as tear sheets, that I have not seen elsewhere.

On the card we have two grainy Wain cats, one yellow fellow attacking a meal of fish – his mouth in an “O” of expectation. I like the way his paws manage to hold the implements in a logical way which I would personally find challenging if I was drawing this. The orange, grumpy, cat looks on in expectation holding a three-prong fork and knife up like he might bang on the table with them. Next to them in script it reads in neat script, This is no Fish Story. Again, while maybe in the quirky style of Wain somehow perhaps misses the mark?

Detail of a Christmas page done by Wain that I purchased and wrote about last December.

The sender of the card has underlined the above and written, No-sir-ee – Dearest Ross; How are you enjoying your vacation. I am having a fine time. Love to all, Bradley. It was mailed to Master Ross W. Guernsey, Schoharie, Scho, Co. New York. As I mentioned before, the stamp and cancellation has been torn off so no date and no point of origin for the card. (In sorting out the address a bit the internet told me that Ross W. Guernsey was a life-long resident of Schoharie, New York. I have no way of knowing if that seems true or AI just sort of winding me up.)

Our friend Mr. Huld was sadly certainly not the only one taking advantage of Louis Wain and liberating his work for his own purposes. This is perhaps though the most egregious and evident example I have run across. Still, I remain grateful for a snippet of Louis Wain I wouldn’t have seen otherwise. I intend to continue to sniff out some of this newspaper work in its original form.

Winkin’

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: Like most New Yorkers I awoke to a much cooler day today after several days or grueling and punishing heat. And this fellow was looking up at me on my desk when I got here this morning. (Envision my desk, an old drawing table someone gave me, as a living, roiling, mass of things which occasionally coughs up something from a lower stratum. One morning last week it was freakishly an early family photo of Kim’s. I don’t remember having seen it before and have absolutely no idea how that ended up in the mix.)

I purchased this card at the most recent edition of the postcard sale. You would think that it might be embossed with the very textured, woven look of the background (like the surface of an old suitcase), but it is not. This very sporty cat however, who has a hat, high (detachable?) collar and bow tie all of his day. That chapeau (more or less the same blue as his natty bowtie), is at an especially jaunty angle and sized just right for between his pointed ears.

As cat coloring goes, he is a bit nondescript. His hair is sort of a brown mix but without a distinct stripe like a tabby. He’s got a saucy look with his gaze directed, not at us, but toward someone or something to the viewer’s left. While it isn’t all the way to thuggish, his wink isn’t one of affection and I would say he’s a tough guy. (Cats blink and wink with affection and sometimes of course as they get sleepy – which being cats is much of the time.)

This card was mailed from Rotterdam on April 3, 1917 (I needed Google’s help with that) and addressed in a purpleish ink to Mej. W. H. van Etten, Oudshofstraat, Steenbergen. In the same ink and hand on the left, it appears to say something like, Jac. Pat.

So this uncredited artist could be the Netherlands answer to Louis Wain. He looks like he is up for some trouble – I can see him shooting craps or pulling a minor heist. While Wain’s cats can have that quality there is something always a bit scattered about them and there is usually a sly joke somewhere.

Back of the card.

The only identifying mark on the card is a stylized PN and the number 2501-4 on the front. While an internet search shows Postcard News as utilizing these initials, they appear to be a later, American card company.

As a kid I had a remarkable tortie named Winkie. I have probably written about her before although not that I can think of at any great length. She was my first cat soulmate, was extremely smart (arguably too smart for her own good), and had several extra toes on each front paw as well as an extra joint somehow which made her look like she was on her tip toes.

I’m sorry not to have a photo of Winkie available, but here is Cookie Fussbudget Butler.

She and my cat Otto have left me with the impression that the girl cats are smarter than the boys, although the fellows are more likely to be very affectionate. This plays out a bit with Cookie and Blackie. However, it must be said that lately Cookie has become assertively in need of attention and leaps onto the bed nightly (dramatically jumping over Kim’s pillowed head and mine), lands next to me and begins loud meowing for pets. She has always been the more vocal, chattier of the two cats and now the vocalizations are long, loud and drawn out conversations and I suppose recriminations. Cookie (aka Cookie Monster), the tuxie of the two, is quite a card.

In the Yard with Cats

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: I am heading to New Jersey tomorrow for a few days and this card has me in a pleasant mind of backyard time I hope to enjoy. My roses are in bloom and the gorgeous purple-blue hydrangea, both front yard and back, is starting its ascension into its first flowers of the season. The herbs are well on their way and I understand my grapes have finally come back with a will. Strawberries have already made an appearance and the dahlias are shooting up en force!

I will, of course, be greeted to varying degrees by the resident cats there. Beauregard will claim as much lap time as possible while Milty and Gus will shove in where they can. Stormy and Peaches, my girl cats, are my scaredy cats and although they may (or may not – thinking of you Peaches!) be glad to see me.

The grapevine has returned with a vengeance I am glad to see. All the garden photos are via my friend Winsome.

If you pay attention to all things cats on the internet, you know that catios are all the rage and you can purchase them pre-made (think screened tent for your cats) and less expensive, or you can build a more elaborate version. Ideally the cats have free passage from house to safe outdoor harbor in the catio, but there are an increasing number where the expectation is that you will plop them in and take them back out yourself. Of course, I have considered these but I am not carrying my precious pusses outside to put them in a flimsy screened enclosure. No, I would have to be one of those folks who built something solid and give them cat door access to it.

Although I grew up with cats that roamed free in the yard and divided their time in and out of the house as a matter of course, this is no longer the way in the area where I grew up and where we now have a house. At some point, keeping your cat inside, or with a collar for brief outside turns, became the way of things. Cats are chipped now in case they are lost, although something about putting that in her cats always made my mother nervous. Although all these cats came from living on the streets, none of them has set a paw outside since.

The aforementioned Peaches.

There is something wonderful however about my childhood memories of cats wandering in and out, more or less at will, without thinking about it. They enjoyed it so much and all the better if we were outside with them. As I kid I would sit outside and play with them for hours. I actually haven’t thought about it for years.

Like this photo we might have had a light indoor chair outside, although it would likely be alongside a bunch of lawn chairs. (My father eventually bought heavy outdoor chairs and tables at garage sales, but I was older by then.) If we were outside at least a few of the cats and the dog would be out with us although, maybe someone was sleepy inside too. There were no particular rules. We just never thought about it. Everyone pretty much came in at night unless for some reason they had a mysterious kitty rendezvous and were off on a toot for the evening. Noted but not a cause for alarm.

The dahlias are showing early promise.

Looking at these folks and their cats in their backyard in the dabbled sunlight it makes me think about it. The women are in their long dresses of the day but summer versions and the man, seated behind them, is in a suit with a tie. (One could say he is sort of not quite fully participating.) Those summer cottons which while beautiful must have required difficult laundry and endless patient ironing. Hard to see but the woman in white is leaning on a bit of a chicken wire enclosure behind her. When we look closely there are beds of plants, something leafy and green climbing up an arbor to the viewers left and behind them.

It was clearly a bit of an occasion. Girl kitty (my assumption) is wearing a big bow and looks a tad unhappy about it although not in full on revolt. She perches in a timid way on the chair with a cushion. She is a light-colored tabby-ish kitty, orange most likely? The other looks like a tom and he is in a loving if tightly gripped hold for the photo. Look at the stripes on his legs! Those black bands! Both have white faces and front paws. Handsome fellow!

Backyard is blooming!

The yard has a high fence around it as far as we can see, although technically not one that would keep an interested (let alone determined) cat in or out. My backyard is also fenced, but given small spaces as entry points near the ground I have found all sorts of animals back there including a fox who got in and admittedly didn’t seem to know how to get out. (I opened the gate and invited him to take his time leaving.) Cats do come by occasionally – that is how Stormy and Gus came to live with mom. Some of you might remember the stray tom I christened Hobo who we fed on and off for several years.

Hobo back in 2023.

This photo was never sent and nothing was written on the back. On the back there is a very faded company logo for Central Studio, and an address, 103 College Street, Burlington, VT. It is easy to imagine that this was taken in Vermont, a singular photo postcard and the cats were clearly rallied for the photo opp. It is a wonderfully distilled moment from a long ago summer.

Meanwhile, on my way to the Jersey shore so a Jersey summer specific card to come tomorrow!

The Well Dressed Puss

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: Ah, what is the well dressed cat wearing these days? At work I saw a few sporting Knick’s attire (dogs wear it better I am afraid), some need newborn baby style onesies to keep them from a surgical site (kinder than the cone of shame if it works), and there is this strange meme on the internet to put them in yoga pants, which turns out to be a stunningly bizarre look. I may have mentioned that we have a policy against dressing the cats here at Deitch Studio and they seem to be grateful for it. Once again, this seems to be a fundamental difference between cats and dogs. I have handed over many a branded bandana to a pup at work and most seem to embrace it.

This off IG. Oh my…

The imaginary sartorial bliss of these well drawn felines from 1908 certainly provides a counterpart in the space of time and imagination. I’m hazarding a guess to say this artist (it is unsigned) is an early US pretender to the Louis Wain throne.

These four gentleman cats all duff hats, jackets – three have monocles, two have walking sticks – one sort of shillelagh-esque on the end. Each kitty has a different model hat, but each one is stylish in keeping with the period. I was actually in New York City’s oldest hat store yesterday, JJ Hats, founded in 1911. It was doing a fairly booming business, and I admit I made a not insubstantial contribution to their income for the day. (Maybe some hat related posts in the near future. I stocked up.) It was there, several decades ago, that I purchased the black Stetson cowboy hat Kim wears as one of his first birthday gifts from me.

It’s actually currently under scaffolding but it looks like this!

Hats of all kinds on display.

These kitties have a variety of top hats, a stove pipe and a sort of bowler/deer slayer model. They wear fancy pointed shoes and dressy sort of smoking jacket style coats – one with a boutonniere. Their trousers, some cuffed and others not, all have a decoration down the leg I associate with tuxedo pants. (I just looked this up, the stripe down the side of tuxedo trousers is to hide the seam and give them a more cohesive look. Who knew?)

Tempted to buy Kim a new straw hat…these can survive a rain storm.

Even their collars represent a variety of styles of the day, mostly the high, white stiff ones that would have been attached by a few buttons, although our fellow in blue with the top hat seems to be wearing a different, long flat one. We have a few different cat kinds here too – from stripe-y short hair to a fluffy Persian look. Hands (paws) are mostly conveniently tucked in jacket pockets, with the exception of one gloved one holding a walking stick on the end.

The top of the card poses the question, Are we top-notchers on dress? Well, look at our clothes. This seems to arise with a bit of smoking detail around it. Behind the gentleman cats a vague landscape of mountains and perhaps water and grassy fields is sketched in. I would have thought these natty kitties belonged in a more urban setting.

Hats purchased.

Someone has written, Love to Leslie From Margaret at the bottom. It is addressed to Master Leslie H. Stauffer, 5314 Addison Street, West Philadelphia, PA. It was mailed from Braddock PA on February 5 1908 at 9 AM. I always think about these lucky children getting these fun cards in the mail at the turn of the century.

Cookie is, of course, always in formal dress, even when napping behind Kim on the couch.

As it happens, Kim and I head off to Philadelphia shortly. He will be reading at Partners & Son bookstore tonight. I hope to report on that and a whole bunch of other Deitch Studio activity around Kim’s book, How I Make Comics tomorrow so stay tuned.