cat collection

Cat Chair Photo Sleuth

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: Frankly, there are mysterious things that go on with photo purchases I will never understand, and one stumbling on the weirdness of finding photos that must have started life together, or in some sense hail from the same source, and end up being sold by entirely different entities. I have examined this phenomena once or twice before, most memorably in The Mysteries of Felix where several tiny passport size photos of people wearing a Felix mask came to me via different sellers at very different times. In this case I recently purchased the photo above of this toddler in a cat chair – which I happen to think is remarkable enough with that great cat chair. However, it is also amazing that while I purchased this photo from a seller on eBay, located in Maryland (for less than $10) the other, which went on sale at the same time as mine did (was listed at $35) and is being sold by someone in Indiana. My photo has been slipped out of its stand up cardboard frame, long lost no doubt, while the other one still sports its display frame. While there is nothing about the cat chair that allows us to positively identify it, I think the carpet both are set upon is distinctive enough to tell us it was the same photo studio set. I have put them together below so you can see them side-by-side.

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Cat chair image not in my collection

 

If the cryptic writing on the back of my card means what I think it does, my card also originated in Indiana. Here it is below and very hard to read, but look at the bottom, Evansville, Ind.

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Back of photo, Pams-Pictorama.com collection

 

For what it’s worth, I think the kid in my photo is the more winning of the two by far, and meanwhile who wouldn’t be charming perched in a nice cat chair like this one? I have never seen a chair like this before – in a photo or as an object. I reminds me in design of the ashtray stand I have below which I have written about in one of my most popular past posts, Wooden Novelty Co.

 

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Blackie with the cat ashtray holder, Pams-Pictorama.com

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Pip Chair, sadly not in my collection

The chair also seems to be something of a kissin’ cousin to the chair the Pip (of Pip, Squeak and Wilfred fame) chair I was unable to purchase in Close Quarters a few weeks ago. It is my assumption that all of the above were designs that could be purchased and executed by the ambitious lay person – however like the photo in Wooden Novelties, could also be purchased fully finished as well. And yes, space or no space, I would snap this cat chair up in an instant given the opportunity!

I assume we will never know the story of these photos, to what degree they belonged together and wandered away from each other. I imagine that there was some sort of a sale where they were purchased by different dealers and turned over on eBay by coincidence at the same time. What we do not know is if the connection is closer – were these siblings and was it an estate sale they came from? I am a bit regretful that they will part company, but they will at least coexist for awhile longer on this blog post.

 

Kitten Class

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Pam’s Pictorama: Okay, admittedly, I have proven that I have a soft spot for this kind of advertising cards. I recently wrote about advertising from another thread company, J&P Coats, in my post By a Thread. (This company, Clark’s Mile-End Spool Cotton predates J&P Coats by a bit.) That one examined the early thread industry a bit, as well as bemoaning the lack of notion stores today. The card featured in that post featured a cheeky bunch of kits teasing an angry dog, held by thread.

This card takes the Louis Wain-esque approach to advertising with these rambunctious kittens being taught a somewhat mysterious lesson in rats and threads – which the kittens seem to enjoy. (I like the way the trousers were drawn to allow for fluffy cat tails to hang out.) These fellows, and they are all boy kitties, are ready to go after those rats! Are they going to use thread to do it? The rats jumped over the thread on the moon and the little dog laughed? I’m not sure. If it did have a meaning it is lost on me – love the image though.

Evidently from the heyday of Victorian trade cards, this card would actually predate Wain’s success (his first drawings were published in 1886), or at best overlap with his first years of publication – therefore perhaps it is this tradition he came out of rather than the other way around and someone riffing on him. Cats having long provided fodder for the trade card business. By way of reminder and comparison, I stole this great Wain image below off the internet – I have not entered into the high flying world of Louis Wain cards – yet!

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Louis Wain Postcard, not in my collection

 

Feathers, the Fat Cat

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: As you can see Feathers is a robust fellow and at 40 pounds an extraordinarily large one. Unlike most fat cats, Feathers seems to wear his weight handsomely and is well proportioned. I have a soft spot (so to speak) for cats with spotty noses and this further endears this guy to me. Interesting, an idle online search on Feathers turned up a fellow blogger (Another Enormous Cat with a Postcard of His Own) who owns this card, but with the added bonus that the writing on the back reveals that the people had actually visited Feathers, then 19 and up to 46 lbs. Go Feathers! Sadly, my card is postally unused without a great tale.

It is impressive that Feathers not only worked his girth up to more than 40 pounds, but also lived to a ripe old age. While my cat Zippy made it to 20 – with diabetes and other issues, and my mother has had several cats live into their 20’s – one would think that the size of the cat would have shortened his lifespan. (I can’t imagine the lecture one would get from a vet today.) Somehow Feathers managed to figure out how to have his cake and eat it too! One wonders if he was already rotund as a kitten as we will assume he was given his moniker of Feathers at a young age.

Longevity among cats seems to be on the rise and it now seems unusual if a cat doesn’t live into its late teens at least. Kim has pointed out that cat life was cheaper when he was young and that it is amazing how much longer they are living in these days of premium cat foods and vet visits. Cookie and Blackie are on what he calls the 20 year plan which includes a rather precise diet as prescribed by our vet who insisted that these kits take a few pounds off. (We are not even allow to speak the words cat treats to these kits.) Cookie in particular curses that day (and the vet) and she is clearly of the opinion that she would rather live well than long, but she does not really get a say in the matter.

I did search, but could not find articles relating to Feathers and his Colorado Springs family, Mr. and Mrs. James George; although clearly, given the evidence of the professional postcard and the family from another state having visited, word about Feathers must have spread via some form of media at the time. However, Feathers is not forgotten and we celebrate his evident long life as well as his place in the pantheon of cats as a very portly puss.

 

Toy Cat

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Pam’s Pictorama Toy Post: This cat is the sort I imagine I would have very much loved to own as a small child. He is sturdy, neat and bold in his black and whiteness, with round edges and a friendly face. There is a cheerful durability to him, small and convenient for a child to carry. I think I would have been very pleased to wander around with this guy clutched in my arms as a toddler. I feel compelled to report (Mom and Dad please take note) that I never had a toy stuffed cat as a child. Clearly I have been making up for lost time.

It is strange the toys that we do end up fixating on as kids. I have written about a soft black and white dog named Squeaky who went everywhere with me (featured in Felix on an Outing), but I also had a hard kuala bear my father brought back from a news junket to Australia, which I carried around when I was a little bit older. The bear did not have a name, just kuala bear, and he was made of some sort of real fur. That is a bit shocking to me now, however I was only about 6 and only thought that it was very soft. While the fur was soft the bear itself was stuffed with something very hard and he had spiky plastic claw paws. I no longer have him and have no idea what happened to him, but he seemed to belong more or less to the same family as the toys shown below from the Google image file.

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The question of the type of fur these bears sport seems to be open for debate online even now. The obvious guess is kangaroo fur since that country seems to have a surplus of kangaroos and no great love for them. I am sure that these days my mother (animal rights activist Butler) would never have approved it now. However, he was my constant companion for a very long time, eventually losing a claw or so and his ears and some other spots worn to baldness. We were inseparable.

This new toy cat has no maker tag for identification, but he came to me from Great Britain (a fine toy-making nation) and I assume it is his ancestral home. He does bear some resemblance to a small dog toy that came to me via Kim years ago, shown below. Perhaps not the same maker, but kissin’ cousins nevertheless. All of these are toys that have seen many miles and years, and much child love.

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September 1889

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Pam’s Pictorama: By some luck of the draw, I purchased this card about a month shy of its 127th anniversary, advertising the Hancock County Fair in Britt, Iowa which that year was featured on September 17, 18 and 19. Although I thought it might have been a weekend, as it is this year, it was instead Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. It is too late to attend this year, the fair was held on September 2-4, but yes, I am pleased to report that it is still around after all these years.

Somehow this wacky bubble-blowing cat is a fitting image for a fair reminder. I’m not sure about the I’ll Blow it Bigger or Bust tag line, but he is a great crossed eyed feline using a very old-fashioned method of blowing bubbles from a clay pipe and mug. I like the way he has it clutched in his kitty paws.

My own childhood held two annual fairs, bookending either side of the summer. A local church, St. Georges, had a splendid fair which kicked off the summer in late May. It was more of the jumble sale variety, with some small, easy games and all the carnival food and local baked goods you could want. It was within walking distance of where we lived and it heralded the start of the summer season each year. However, end of August or early September, where our town melded into the next, the Firemen’s Fair was held. Although on a small plot, in front of the firehouse and large enough for the trucks to line up there when necessary, it was chock-a-block full of rides and carnival amusements. There was a ferris wheel, cotton candy and candy apples (I have an admitted weakness for both) as well as games of skill and goldfish to be won.(Sadly, none of those goldfish enjoyed much longevity. Cannot even blame the kitties, although our cat Zipper had his way with a few fish in his time, but that is another story.)

Of course when we were little, we insisted on at least one night at the fair and reveled in its glory. As we got older, it was the place where you went with your summer boyfriend/girlfriend in tow and showed off your summer tan as you reacquainted yourself with people you had not seen over the summer. It may be a false memory, but I think there were years in college I was able to go before heading back to school. I have a fiendish love of candied apples and cotton candy.

I checked up on the fair online and it turns out that ours is one of the largest fireman’s fairs in the state of New Jersey and the last time I was in town in July there were already signs up, announcing the dates for the last weekend of August where it merged into September this year. As you read this, I am likely in the South of France dining on good cheese and wine so no complaints, but my mouth is watering a bit for a candied apple, freshly made with the first apples of the season.

 

Kitty Sextette Singers

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: I concede that I have been completely unable to find a trace of what the heck this item is and any information about Amos of Hollywood, let alone the charming cat sextette represented here. The cat chorale is made up of largely striped cats, but there’s one stand out white kitty and of course my favorite is the all black cat which is represented almost entirely and solely by his glowing eyes. Another black kit is the maestro conductor, perched on his hind legs to add a purpose to his position. The illusion is, of course, to a noisy bunch of backyard felines driving hopes of sleep away, but I would love to find these songsters on my fence.

If you look carefully you will realize that the photo is a composite of numerous photos, six as far as I can tell. (It is easiest to see if you look at the sidewalk.) I cannot entirely identify, but I believe the cats on top of the fence were all stripped in later as well. There is some loss to the photo where you can see bits of white. A nice, tiny moon has been placed in the upper left corner. I am sure that the conductor cat holds his baton only through the magic of the darkroom. The poster for the Hollywood Bowl shows a date of July 7-August 28, but no year appears any place on the card to identify it. And what are the dogs up to? Are they appreciative audience? Chorus as back-up to the cats? Or are they getting ready to chase them?

And finally, does Amos of Hollywood refer to the black conductor cat? I cannot find anything, but Amos and Andy when I attempt to search it. T.K. Hastings has also disappeared as far as I can tell. This card is about 8″x 5″ and I assume it was some sort of lobby display, although a bit small for that. I purchased it off of eBay and admit I was the only taker, but I am delighted. I stumbled on it under an obscure listing. With the damage to the corner I will try to get it framed as soon as possible and up on the wall. In the meanwhile, I offer it to you all for your delectation. May dreams of cat choruses dance in your head tonight.

Bogue’s Soap

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Pam’s Pictorama: This kitty cut-out is about six inches high. She (pink ribbon makes me think she and there’s a certain girl cat quality) sports a rather enormous bell – gosh, birds were certainly safe around this cat unless they were stone deaf. Kim is not a fan of this particular acquisition in the cat advertising category. I admit that is later than the Victorian cards I have been purchasing and it seems to have had another purpose. As you can see below, the back of the card is both advertising for the soap and instruction for the use. Soap Kitty had a Doggie partner as well and you could obtain on of these Cats or Dog. Purchase 3 cakes of BOGUE’S SOAP for 25 cents. I have supplied the dog as a grab off of Google and he is missing his “stand-up strip” which obscures the interesting if racist diatribe on the back of the cat card, also shown at the bottom of the post.

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Dog image, not in my collection.

With a quick search I was interested to find out a bit about Charles B. Bogue from the Historic Albion, Michigan website. Despite the NYC Hudson Street address on the card, Mr. Bogue hailed originally from Michigan and then made his soap fortune in Chicago.

In his personal life, Charles B. Bogue was married to Martha Gleason Harris in 1876, and the couple had three children, all of whom are buried in Riverside Cemetery. After their divorce in 1899, Martha married Charles’ brother George Bogue. Charles in the meantime married Eva Knight of Chicago and moved there where he continued in the mercantile trade under the firm name Bogue Soap Company. He had one daughter by his second marriage. Charles was still living in Chicago in the late 1920s.

The claims made by the soap, complete with instructions – for use in all seasons, no boiling…saves labor, shortens the wash day, and makes home happy. My favorite is no more blue Mondays. Not to mention the $100 offer for any bar of Bogue’s Soap that will not do all that is claimed for it.

A Bogue’s soap company (artisanal and utterly devoid of cats, dogs, or racist advertising) exists today in Ojai, California. Their soap can be purchased at Whole Foods and other venues. There’s no reference to the soap’s history and perhaps is not even the same company. Artisanal or not, I would personally like them much better if they were still offering cat and dog cut-outs with every 75 cent purchase. However, buy it, try it, you’ll like it!

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Back of cat cut-out with cardboard strip to stand-up

Kitty Chorus

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Me-ow!

Pam’s Pictorama Post: Not surprisingly, this cat choral card attracted me for the kits, not the ad. These anthropomorphic kitties appear to be the cats of a Louis Wain influenced pen and their pop-eyed expressions may pay tribute to him. However, there is much that is their own to applaud, such as the conductor using his tail as a baton and the little fellow without music who has his claws into that pole – although we will assume he is lifting his voice in lilting cat song while he puts his back in to a good scratch, tail pointing up. J.M. Ives must have been pleased enough with the that he has planted his copyright at the bottom – a surprisingly early 1881, making this card earlier than most. Perhaps that explains its single color printing.

While these Victorian cards rarely turn up anything much about the what or where that is being advertised a quick search on D. McCarthy & Co. revealed that this family owned business was headquartered in Syracuse, New York. In 1893 they constructed the building, shown below, for the department store. The building still exists in Syracuse today and evidently one can visit a small exhibit about the history of the company there.

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D. McCarthy, Sons & Co. store in Syracuse and restored today.

 

I admit surprise when I realized that JM Ives is the Ives in Currier and Ives – or at least it most likely is as the name and the dates are right. I cannot explain why he would have published this only under his own name. I also didn’t realize that neither Currier nor Ives were artists, just publishers, Currier was a lithographer and Ives was an accountant in the company who Currier took in as a partner over time. So Mr. Cat Artist is lost to time on this one. But whoever he was, I like his style and I’d buy shoes from his cats.

Poor Mr. Canary!

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Pam’s Pictorama: The parade of Victorian advertising continues with this card from the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. – a company which seems to have embraced cat card with great enthusiasm. I wrote about a rather famous series of advertising cards portraying a brief cat tale of love lost and found in my post of the same name. Leaving the topic of the efficacy of cats in advertising, instead I am taking a peek at the history of the smug expression of cats that inspired this popular phrase.

The phrase, cat that ate the canary (the Australian or UK version is evidently the cat that ate the cream) and usually used as smiling like the cat that ate the canary refers to a pleased, smug, self-satisfied and perhaps a tad guilty expression – like this fellow on the card and his toothy grin. Interestingly enough the phrase seems to have just emerged at about the time this card would probably have been issued, in the late 1880’s or early 1890’s when trade card advertising would be at its peak. In 1891 and 1892 several newspapers in the United States, UK and Australia published the same joke which appears to be the first reference:

Father:  That cat made an awful noise in the back garden last night.
Son:  Yes, sir.  I guess that since he ate the canary, he thinks he can sing.

In researching this phrase my favorite reference was a fellow blogger and their post can be found at Cat That Ate the Canary. My favorite part is their reference to a story of a cat in New Hampshire that ate five canaries, published in the Victoria Advocate in 1952. He was accidentally locked in a department store overnight in Keene, New Hampshire. Oh my. I show him below, he really does have a bit of a criminal look about him.

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Cat that ate five canaries photo, Keene New Hampshire, 1952

 

As some of you know, I come from a lineage that not only loves cats, but also birds. My mother is extremely active in preserving water fowl and rescued and rehabilitated them for years as well. The cat eats bird thing has always been a sore point and luckily Cookie and Blackie do not have an opportunity to put their bird largess (or lack thereof) to the test. Still, those Sylvester and Tweety cartoons always nag at me a bit. Poor Sylvester, forever trying to get a meal out of that one, lousy, annoying little bird!

And for or those of you who need a refresher, this is the first appearance of Sylvester and Tweety together!

 

 

Powo! Cat Boxing

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: This summer of cat advertising cards continues with this newest in the series by this popular artist. I do not know who this fellow or woman was, but he or she had a significant share of this trade. I love these! Each one seems a bit puzzling, but the group seems to form a loose narrative. Perhaps when I get enough of these together I will see the whole story.

This card barely left space for the ad at the bottom – I couldn’t find a reference to Lawson Baths, clearly printed on after the card was already made. The overgrown baby cat seems to be the one saying, Now Pa brace up and have some style. It is the same toothy cat as in the post Arctic Baking Powder and, probably, more recently the entry Westerman’s Shoe Bazaar.

It is perhaps politically incorrect of me to say, but I have always been a fan of cat boxing. I am not alone – film of cat boxing goes back at least to Thomas Edison – 1894 Boxing Cats. A quick look turned up the very delightful Cat Fight in Boxing Ring with Dog Audience – sort of a variation on the Dogville comedies, but as a commercial for Chevrolet. Kim says he remembers seeing cat boxing on the Ed Sullivan show. Of course of contemporary vintage there are many on Youtube, something along the lines of 1.83 million results at a quick look. A very popular favorite however is Cats Playing Patty-cake – I thought I would fall off my chair laughing the first time I saw it.

Cookie and Blackie indulge in this pastime occasionally. As brother and sister it seems it is natural to square off once in awhile, stand up on their hind legs and take a poke at each other for a few minutes – usually in slow motion. As cat fighting goes it is usually the least likely to get serious and many of these early filmed efforts are likely to have been staged – although I will say those cats really seem to be going at it in the Chevrolet commercial. It is mostly very theatrical, even here in the apartment. I don’t know why, but it does make me laugh when they do it. I will let you know if I manage to reach for the iPhone to tape them at it any time soon and we will make them internet stars!