cat postcard

Flying to the Moon

Posted by

1

Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: I guess I am a sucker for kitten balloon photos. You may remember an earlier, similar card in my post Flying Dutch Kitties, which is in all fairness, a better photograph. It was the moon that grabbed me in this one – I do love a good man in the moon. (I am, after all, married to Kim Deitch. His man in the moon images are, of course, the best and one of the many sterling qualities I married him for.) This one looks full of mischief to me. I can remember being a little kid and looking hard at the moon and being fairly sure I could put together the face of the man there.

This appears to be an American made card, sent from Chicago in 1912, but the specific date is obscured. It was sent to Austria however, and there is a long note, penned in tiny German I have no hope of translating. Landor, the maker of the card, seems to have been partial to cat photo postcards, made at the turn of the century, but I cannot find the history of the company online.

Unlike the masterfully constructed set in Flying Dutch Kitties, this one is deceptively simple. As if you could have easily taken this photo at home with a couple of kittens, string and tissue paper. For me, these are the photo equivalents of how I felt about the Little Rascals when I was a kid. You would look at those various stitched together vehicles, clubhouses and staged shows and the construction seemed like it should only be just within your reach – which of course, wasn’t true at all. Now I frankly marvel at the thoughtful construction and technology of them.

As for me, I have failed to record Cookie and Blackie doing any of their “tricks” for the camera – hind leg standing and boxing; Cookie giving Kim high fives; or her skill in moving a small rocking chair she is partial to. Candid photos of orchid eating or displayed on Kim’s desk is about the best I can do with these two. Too bad – I could be a contender for the Queen of the Cat Video on Youtube if only I was a little bit faster with the camera.

Cookie & Blackie 2015

Cookie & Blackie in an undated photo

 

Painted Puss

Posted by

3

Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: This rather lurid painted photo caught my eye recently – I guess it was something about the saucy looking woman with this cat draped around her shoulders. (My cat Zippy used to occasionally climb up around my neck when he was a youngster – while I was sitting at the drawing table. It seemed very sweet, but was a little tough on the neck and shoulders after a few minutes. I don’t know how he got the idea – I have never had another cat that did this.) Somehow the colored cat’s fur and woman’s hair have more or less merged into one here. The painted cat expression can’t hide a certain annoyance when we look closely – somehow they managed to leave kit’s whiskers white as well as some chin hairs. She, on the other hand and if somewhat garishly painted, has quite the come hither look. You boys better watch out!

This is a German card and the postmark is illegible. It was sent to someone in Holstein and there is a pencil note written in German which I have not attempted to translate, but the sender’s name is Erna Steine.

This photo reminds me that my maternal grandmother had matching high school graduation photo portraits, cap and gown, of my mother and her brother, my Uncle John, hanging in her living room. They were the first hand-painted photos that I ever saw and I was always fascinated by them. My mother’s in particular looked nothing like herself. I wouldn’t say that it had as much impact on me as the somewhat terrifying, dramatically technicolor picture of Jesus in her bedroom (that’s another whole story – Kim and I were just discussing that yesterday) which more or less scarred and colored my views on Christ for years, but it stayed with me and formed and lodged an image of my high school mother in my mind.

My Uncle John looks exactly like a younger version of him in his photo – all red hair and green eyes. As for my mother, perhaps it is the fact that my mother truly never wears make-up. (I wonder sometimes how I can be her daughter since I have delighted in it since my early teens.) The painted photo gives her vivid lipstick and rouge. My mother’s nose was also broken in an accident after that time, and it was set slightly differently – bottom line, she is barely recognizable. Yet of course, in another way she is, especially when I look at the photo with adult eyes. When my grandmother’s house was cleared out and ultimately sold, I believe my mother ended up with both photos. My parents have just moved and almost everything is still in boxes – I must remember to ask where those photos are. I would like to have them someday.

A Puss Cafe

Posted by

0

Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: Party cats! Let’s face it, this is a favorite sub-topic of mine – dress the cats up in party clothes and have a good time. (See my recent post named in fact, Party Cats.) Clearly, those folks back in 1911 had a similar sentiment. The exact process they used to arrive at the photo above is an interesting question – no Photoshop back then. I assume they made a print of a photo (remember, no enlargers in 1911!) and then painted over it and shot it again? As I was working on this post I very accidentally stumbled across the original photo, a photo postcard from 1909, which I have grabbed off of eBay and offered here for comparison. Fascinating – I don’t think I have run into this process from this early period.

s-l1600-2.jpg

Photo card not in Pictorama collection

 

The cat has quite a sour look on his face. He looks like he wants to smack the heck out of someone – the strap for the tiny top hat pulling under his chin.  What a puss – as they say! His tail seems to have been fattened up a bit in the touch up, and he has strangely incongruous stripes on his backend if you look carefully. And those two bottles of drink with a single glass on a tiny table – waiting for his girl?

The back of this card, written in pencil, is the first I totally give up on reading; it has faded beyond recognition and seems to have been a bit sloppy to begin with. (Too much drink, like the kitty?) It was mailed to Oscar Lovesturn (?) Stanwood, Washington on October 11, 9 PM 1911 from Decorah, Iowa. Frankly, I was surprised to learn that this card was that old – it looked newer to me, and I purchased it without seeing the back where it is canceled. Reminiscent more of early television than early photo postcards – I felt that way a bit about the equally old (and mysterious) Cat of the Sea post as well. Ironic of course considering both hail from before 1920!

20170225-00008-copy

 

 

 

 

 

Cat Cap

Posted by

0

Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: This French photo postcard shows a sprightly fellow who has had this hat (it was advertised as a sailor’s cap, I’m not sure about that) placed jauntily on his head. He appears fairly divorced from this fact – and instead has his gaze fixed on something (we’ll never know what) off in the distance – something a wise cat photographer uses to keep the attention of his puss photo subjects we’ll assume. There is no date, although there is a studio mark in the lower left which appears to be DLG and 440/2. Oddly the back is addressed, Monsieur Robert Douet, but it bears no postmark, nor stamp so perhaps it was hand delivered? I can’t quite decode the faded message on the back. It appears to be bonjour petit yor Y Le-Cointre. So, something along the lines of Hello little one and a name. A French cat, you’d think he’d wear a beret.

It’s an odd photo – the hind most quarters of the cat are cut off from view. Nice looking kitty though, bold stripes and a sweet face and it appealed to me. When I look close I almost think the hat looks more like it might belong to a jockey. I can’t explain what seems to be an age-old desire among some of us to accessorize cats. It is perverse – taking these animals which are essentially finely-tuned killing machines and being endlessly amused by plunking a sombrero or pair of eyeglasses on them. However, I’m the first to say it entertains the heck out of me. Bring on the Youtube videos!

Years ago I had a feral cat, Otto (Miss Otto Dix, Pictorama readers know her story) who liked to curl up on my head at night and I would call her my cat hat. We were best friends, but I would have lost a hand or arm trying to dress her up. (I was tempted, but resisted.) I also had a great hope of walking her on a leash – she seemed to have an interest in the outside and we lived on the six floor of an apartment building so I thought she might like it. It was clear though that she could and would wiggle out of any collar or harness – and balked at the very idea, so we never tried. I was afraid of her getting loose. She taught me some hard lessons about the cat-human relationship.

These days Cookie is too cranky to consider dressing up, and Blackie so perfectly distinguished I don’t have the heart to fool with his gorgeous dignity. Alas, I will never become the William Wegman of kitty set.

img_1269

Cookie and Blackie, awaiting dinner one evening.

 

Party Cats

Posted by

1

Pam’s Pictorama: This card passed the it made me laugh when I saw it test. Dancing kitties in party hats – what more can you ask for? I used to have a theory that the cats had secret soirees as soon as I left them alone in the house. In fact, the first year we were together I made Kim a valentine of he and I walking in on them in full decadent party regalia.

While they may not have been enjoying cocktails with umbrellas and putting on festive lais around their necks, I do remember discovering that my various cats and the apartment had a lives of their own while I was away at work. This started before I met Kim and when I lived alone with my first cat, Otto. The two incidents that stick in my mind occurred on days when I normally would have been at work – odd holidays I think, like Election Day which I happen to get off from work, but most people don’t. The first one doesn’t really involve the cat, but in the middle of one day while quietly reading a book, I heard someone letting themselves into my apartment! Turned out they were routine exterminators who came periodically and sprayed the place and I never knew. Seems that they also liked to look at the progress on whatever painting I was working on at the time which we then discussed for a bit. Another time, another apartment, I was home again on a weekday, Otto sitting on the window sill, and suddenly I heard a woman talking to her! And Otto (who was a girl cat) was answering her – they chirped back and forth for a several minutes. Turned out it was a woman on a higher floor who could see her on her window perch and evidently they chatted frequently.

Others have commented on this phenomena. I had a boyfriend once who, in order to see if his phone was out of order, set his tape recorder, went around the corner and called his apartment. When he played the tape he realized that each time the phone rang in the empty apartment, his cat would chirp in response – but strangely the cat never did it when he was home. Was he answering the ring? Years later, one night I awoke to a light in the other part of the apartment (we live in a studio and we sleep in a corner carved out as a bedroom so a light any place will wake me) and got up to see both cats, Otto and Zippy, sitting in front of the lit computer screen – I’d say looking a bit guilty. I’ll just say keep an eye on your credit cards folks. Such is the private lives of apartments and cats.

Our cats Cookie and Blackie enjoy a lot more human companionship than previous pets since Kim works at home, and therefore Deitch studio is in rollicking full tilt most of the time. In fact the kits seem a bit incensed if he and I go out for any length of time and leave them alone. I believe they feel we are here for their ongoing entertainment. So whatever hijinks they do get up to on their own – gin fueled cards games and smoking hookah pipes, wearing party gear, must occur instead late in the dark of the night while the human denizens of the apartment are sound asleep.

 

Catville

Posted by

1

Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: Of course this little fellow and his pun just cracked me up! I’m not entirely sure what exactly he is perched on, but he has a very serious expression and has a very nice striped coat. This card, mailed on August 24, 1914 at 8AM from Oliverea, New York has a slightly primitive look. Despite having spent a fair amount of time in the Catskills, the name Oliverea was not immediately familiar to me. It should have been since it is not far from Big Indian, where I spent a considerable amount of time visiting a long ago boyfriend on weekends. He was cooking at a place called Rudy’s Big Indian – which despite its name was a fairly high-end restaurant in the new cuisine mold of the time, the late 1980’s. In this case it was the kind of food that lead eventually to the farm to table trend of today, local produce and such. My memory was that the owner was a really sweet guy who was very good to the utterly insane guy I was seeing. He was a Buddhist who had been helped by people and was paying it back, but the boyfriend, Andrew, drove us all nuts. I think I heard Rudy died unexpectedly, several years after I had severed ties with Andrew after his post-cocaine sobriety morphed into stage 2 alcoholism. Meanwhile, the restaurant was evidently bought and is now under the name Peekamoose.

Prior to my disasterous, long-distance relationship with Andrew (which briefly turned me into a weekend denizen of Amtrak, staying in nearby Shandaken, and ultimately made me realize that living in the shadow of mountains depresses me terribly) I had grown up visiting cousins in Sullivan county and had a more cheerful opinion of it. The cousins, three of them two girls and a boy, just like the three of us – each Butler a year older than their cousin counterpart. We would run wild in what seemed like endless woods at the back of their house and go swimming in a lake instead of the ocean as we did at home which therefore seemed exotic. They had a huge dog, a Great Dane I think, instead of a German Shepard like ours. It was like a parallel-universe Butler clan located in the Catskills instead of the Jersey shore. It was also the house where my dad had gone for summers as a kid, up fro the City, with this same cousin and his sister – and they would tell us stories of all the bad and interesting things they had done. I only vaguely remember the stories about exploring caves, riding horses and getting yelled at by their aunts. I imagine they were a handful.

As you can see from the back of the card below, this was mailed to Master Paul E. Rooffs (? – I’m open to suggestions on the name) at 890 East 34th Street, Brooklyn, New York. (On a whim I googled this address and found a house that I thought very well might have been there in 1914, but further research showed that it was built in 1920.) To the best I can read the card it says, Aug. 23 – Dear Paul I wish you were here to [sic] with us. I have a good time riding in the Ford and also go swing [or swimming misspelled?] with aunt Will. Expect to go home by the end of the week with lots of love I remain lovingly – it is signed with a name I cannot decode (Suzanna?) and also written at the bottom is Vonderveer Park.

20170114-00002.jpg

Back of Catskill card

 

It goes without saying that a text message will deliver this communication between friends or family more quickly and efficiently today. It will, alas, sadly never have the evocative charm of finding this kitty and message more than a hundred years later. Pity the card collectors of the next century.

Christmas Greetings From All

Posted by

2

20161210-00005-copy

Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: This photo caught my attention for a certain kind of crystal clear beauty and atmosphere. It is timeless and I was somewhat surprised to realize it was sent on Christmas Day, all the way back in 1909. The message, in a clear beautiful hand, reads, Christmas Greetings from all at “560 Beech.” It is not signed however and it is addressed to Mrs. Harry S. Additon, Dover, New Hampshire. It was sent from Manchester, New Hampshire (I believe, although the state is a bit hard to read where the stamp is canceled) and sent at 12M – midnight? Midday?

It looks like a lovely porch and we are ready to have a look out the telescope and curl up in the chair with a good book. No sign of winter either (there is snow out my New York City window as I write this mid-December) and the evergreens are no indicator as to the time of year. Of course, just because this was mailed on December 25 doesn’t mean it wasn’t taken earlier in the year, and we can’t be sure. Kitty seems very relaxed on his perch for winter in New Hampshire however. (And yes, in 1909 it appears you could mail something on December 25!)

There is nothing like a good porch for sitting on. My grandmother had a splendid one and it is probably the only porch I have had the pleasure of spending any real amount of time on. It was deep and shaded, and the heavy wooden chairs rocked. There was a small table had a red basket made of a thin woody material placed in the middle of it – perhaps with a pumpkin or holding some gourds in the fall. The arms of the chairs were big enough to hold a sweating, heavy glass of ice tea (for the adults) or sweet lemonade (mostly for the kids). There was a bird in the large, old, leafy trees which provided additional shade on a hot summer day, and an old tree stump that held a potted geranium. A whirligig too, but in all fairness I can’t remember if you could see him saw his wood from there or if he was around the other side of the house. That porch was a universe to small kids like me and my sister circa 1970 or so.

My grandmother’s house was on the corner lot of a fairly busy street in a small town, several towns over from where we lived. It was the house my mother grew up in, for the most part anyway, there  having been another when she was very little. (She showed us that house and a candy store had opened in it – fascinating!) My grandmother’s was a neighborhood that still had sidewalks, entirely residential and people did walk by and sometimes they would say hello, mostly not. The back porch was a place where my grandmother could see everything going on in her neighborhood and be seen. There was sometimes a wave from her neighbors, especially her friend Elaine on the opposite corner, across the street. She was a stout woman and she’d say how big we kids were getting. It was the kind of porch that made you more or less the unofficial mayor of your neighborhood, news central.

The porch in this photo is a more private one – shaded like my grandmother’s, but out in the country. This one is for communing with nature and contemplating it, watching birds at their business and spotting the occasional fox or badger, daydreaming. It is a country porch, not a suburban one. Both have their own charms. Funny how it has made me think of long ago summer and fall, but not Christmas and winter. Not yet!

 

 

“Will write a letter soon…Mother”

Posted by

0

20161120-00005-copy-copy

Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: Sometimes I wonder about photos like this – in person it appears to be a homemade photo postcard, although the image did strike me as potentially professional. The bow on the cat, the reflection below – but then again, it is so poorly printed, over exposed and under-developed (Kim has actually given it a bit of a lift in Photoshop and darkened it some). There is the sense that it was some sort of pre-made card with the image supplied by the individual. What a fine looking fellow (or girl?) this is! Such a nice bow and well-defined stripes – if you look carefully you will note an extra toe on the left paw. I have written before about my polydactyl cat, Winkie, (blog post Tom the Bruiser and Good Doggie) and I have long held the view that they are special indeed. (You may remember I mentioned that Winks actually taught herself to use the toilet – my mother woke me up one night to show me and to make sure she wasn’t imagining it.)

For me it is always surprising when someone uses a photo postcard like this and does not refer to the image. You know, “Here’s Kit and we miss you…” sort of thing. Strange. I guess it went without saying that this was Kitty. Did a pile of these sit on her desk? Was it the only one? Instead she has written (sans punctuation), We are all well will write a letter soon hope you are well and having as good weather as we are Mother. It was mailed from Newport on December 18, 1905 at 9:30 AM and received in Louisville, KY on December 20 at an AM time I cannot read. It was addressed to Mr. J. Herbert Shaw, 2510 First Street, Louisville, Kentucky. (Today Google earth shows that as an extraordinarily anonymous brick building, although on a leafy street. I will spare you the image however.)

This postcard lived in a time of US residential mail delivery twice a day – businesses four times. (In Victorian England mail delivery peaked at 12 times a day! Not a wonder that so many postcards come from Britain.) The second residential mail delivery was dropped in 1950. While email today has taken a huge bite out of mail – certainly postcards are an anachronism let alone letters and occasionally those cards I send do take a week to travel from New York to New Jersey – the chattiness of early letters and postcards has returned with email. The snippets of news that my mom and I pass back and forth with our, mostly evening, emails reminds me a bit of these newsy missives. More immediate and without the middle man delivering – but sometimes even with photos of Cookie and Blackie, the grandkits!

Fat Cat

Posted by

0

Scan(2)

Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: It is hard to read, but at the bottom of this photo is written Alec – 5 yrs old. 31 lbs. In case you do not know, I am here to tell you that 31 lbs is an enormous kitty! Not surprisingly, it is a man in a chef’s hat that has treat trained this pudgy fellow. Kitty is clearly used to standing on his hind legs for food treats, although his ears are back here. This card was never mailed and there is nothing else written on it – no indication where it is from although it was purchased from someone in the United States.

It isn’t a good photo. A lousy composition with cat and man way too small, it was obviously snapped in a hurry – perhaps kitty was harder to get agree to pose than I state above. However, it is sort of great anyway and I wanted it for my collection. The chef’s hat on the man really adds something and even though we cannot see kitty well, his personality is obvious. Despite his declared girth there is something of the working cat about him. I do not think he achieved 31 lbs on rodents alone, but I can’t help but suspect that numerous ones fell under his claw paws over time and supplemented his diet. He must have been beloved in some way for this inky card to have made it through time before coming to reside in the Butler archive.

Quite a ways back I posted another photo, Sporty, of a cat performing on his hind legs – that time for a toy and not food. As all of us who share a home with cats know, engaging them in feeding time rituals is necessary, but you have to be careful. Cookie and Blackie seem to attempt to move their feeding times (morning and evening) ever earlier each day. Everyday we do our best to remain firm, lest we end up feeding them on command hourly! Kim tells me tales of cats he knew who drove their owners out of bed in the middle of the night for snacks or would begin destroying the apartment. We had our own unfortunate brush with a cat treat obsessed kitty – treats have been banned from the house as a result and these kits do not even know of their existence. (I trust you all to keep the secret.)  Still, Blackie seems to know when smoked salmon for a sandwich is making an appearance in the kitchen, and Cookie will speak in full cat sentences if her dish of dry food reaches below a certain point. We are just glad they are unable to pop the top of a can or open the refrigerator on their own.

Nice Kitty

Posted by

0

Scan(3)

Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: This snapshot came out of a album by the look of the back of it, and with the highlighted title Nice Kitty preserved as well. There is no date and it seems timeless other than to say my guess about the printing is the 1940’s or later. This is a pretty fine cat costume and I would have enjoyed owning it myself. I do hope there is a tail somewhere even though it isn’t in view of the camera. And of course, I would have preferred it in black, or black and white. Nonetheless, this little girl is enjoying her role and is nicely crouched for the camera in a kitty pose.

Although the idea of a childhood Pam dressing up as a cat would seem self-evident, I do not believe I ever had the honor. These days you can purchase such nice cat ear hair bands and tails that one can put together a very fine outfit indeed. I do own a pair of cat ears, black fur with orange sequins lining the insides. I bought them more than a decade ago when my cat Otto was still around. I remember the first time I put them on and showed her. Clearly, although cats may not see things in detail they understand outlines, and mine had just turned into a giant cat. Her eyes widened briefly and then she gave me an utterly disgusted look and backed away, almost shaking her head in dismay. Her expression was exactly the same as someone who had just heard a racist joke and was deeply offended.