cat

Happy

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Pam’s Pictorama photo post:  On the back of this photo postcard, very faded and in barely visible script it says, This is “Happy” the pet of the family taking a piece of bread. Some of you may remember another photo postcard post with a cat named Happy Hooligan – Happy clearly a good name for a cat at the turn-of-the-century.  I am a real sucker for tuxedo cats and Happy is no exception – he is a dead ringer for at least two of mine from days gone by.  (RIP Roscoe and Zippy!) As handsome as Happy is, nothing takes center stage entirely away from that woman’s hat.  Wowzers! The hat, her sheer girth, her enjoyment of Happy, and Happy reaching up to grab the food (bread??) out of her hands – proving once again that cats haven’t changed a bit in the last 100 years – made me leap to buy this photo. (Ancient Egyptian cats were probably head butting their humans when happy and using their paws to grab a bit of food from people’s hands.) It is a satisfying scene – sunny day, the horizontal siding on the house, broken by the window – but I am vaguely mystified by the covered table outside. Was this scene and composition carefully thought out and arranged in advance? Or were we just lucky to catch them that day?

Fear of Celluloid

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Pam’s Pictorama Toy Post: The parade of toys continues as I detour into an area I have entered into with trepidation, celluloid! As you can tell from these fellows above, it is a fragile medium for toys and generally I amaze that any of these guys have lasted this long. Given the somewhat rough and tumble nature of our lives in our cramped, cat-filled apartment I have become the steward of these precious bits of ancient plastic with some reluctance.

With the exception of the cat playing the fiddle below, a gift from Kim, these were all purchased on eBay for very little money and I deeply suspected I was the only one who appreciated what they were. The cat with the parasol is the most recent purchase, last February I believe. I think it is very beautiful – almost as if it was made of ivory rather than plastic. The Felix next to him is missing his tail and the strings holding him together are looking for an excuse to break. He came with that small indentation in his chest. However, I have quite simply never, ever seen one like him. The smiling kitty that rounds out the group is clearly a kissing cousin to the one with the fiddle. These are both Japanese toys – there are other cats in the band along with the fiddle player but I have never been able to lay claim to another. The fiddle player was closer to black when I first got him and has faded to this red color over time.

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In some ways the transient nature of these toys does add to their appeal, however I think I had better get them put away before Cookie and Blackie wake up from their naps!

Oskar

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Pam’s Pictorama Toy Post:  This little fellow is one of my favorite and most inspired impulse buys. I bought him for a song when he was put up for auction with very little, if any, information. It was several years before I learned that his name is Oskar and that he was produced by Teddy Hermann, a German toy company. He is about 8″ high and he is a natty and roguish presence on the cat shelf. Kim and I have often speculated that you tend to find Oskar routinely in compromising positions with the other stuffed cats, no matter what shelf you put him on.

I suspect he might be somewhat incomplete when it comes to accessories, especially when I compare him to his younger cousin below. (Although they both look like they would always be up for a night of drinking and carousing – how often can you say that about a toy?) He is unlike any of my other cat toys. He has a head made of composition, mohair body and a hand-knit appearing sweater – the photo of his back is dark but you can see the little heart sewn onto his bottom. However, like my Felix toys, it is a bit hard to imagine buying Oskar for your child.  He is, in my opinion, an adult toy.

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This photo from an old eBay (May 2010) listing I found in the Google picture file serves to confirm my feeling.  According to the listing, he was made in the 1950’s as a promotional item for the Frankfurter Illustrierte Journal. He has a rubber face, as opposed to composition, a jauntier sweater and that cheerful neckerchief.  He’s also fluffier. I do wonder if my Oskar was also a promotional item – makes sense – although why a weekly German picture paper (as described on German Wikipedia) would be giving away Oskar as a promotion remains an interesting mystery.  My kind of paper I guess.

Postscript:  Some amazing and very interesting information about Oskar and the Frankfurter Illustrierte Journal via a German Facebook friend, Joachim Trinkwitz. I have copied it below. Mr. Google seems willing to translate…

  • Joachim Trinkwitz “why a weekly German picture paper (as described on German Wikipedia) would be giving away Oskar as a promotion remains an interesting mystery” – because that’s Oskar der Familienvater (the family man), a german newspaper comic strip character from the 1950s. His creator, the cartoonist Carl Fischer AKA Cefischer, actually lost both his arms in WW II, but learned to draw with his mouth and got very popular and successful in West Germany. But nowadays, he’s completely forgotten …

    Joachim Trinkwitz's photo.
    Joachim Trinkwitz Oskar has a Wikipedia page indeed:http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oskar_(Comic), as well as his creator. Lambiek’s Comiclopedia has some information in English, and a few pictures:http://www.lambiek.net/artists/c/cefischer.htm

    Oskar (Comic) – Wikipedia
    Oskar ist die bekannteste Comicfigur des deutschen Zeichners Cefischer. Die Geschichten von Oskar und seiner Familie erschienen von 1952 bis 1962 in der Frankfurter Illustrierten und wurden während dieser Zeit und auch danach in Buchform nachgedruckt.
    DE.WIKIPEDIA.ORG

Passin’ Through

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post:  This card would be pretty interesting even if it was just the musicians, but I really love that it was snapped as the cat was tip toeing through.  Everyone is looking sort of like they just stepped out of a band box – oops, pun I guess. But truly, the neat straw hats, her dress – this is their good bib and tucker.  No idea where this was taken and frankly, the background does look a bit down and out.  A photo postcard with no writing on the back. I would like to hear them play. I imagine it was jolly despite the frayed surroundings.

The cat is the same black and white cow print as my very first cat and best friend when I was a tiny tot, the aptly named Snoopy. A very nice cat, a bit heavier in the tum than this fine looking fellow. When I was a little older we acquired several more cats, all fairly territorial, as cats will be about their yard. Our neighbors, meanwhile, had a marmalade tabby tom of medium size – I think his name was Phil. Somehow this rather shy and peace-loving cat had negotiated a treaty with our cats whereby he could enter the yard as long as he kept moving – was allowed to cross it – without being chased. He would pass with a determined, steady and continuous stride at all hours of the day and night. He was renamed and forever known to the Butler clan as Passin’ Through. This cat has that same let me get out of here yet un-hurried look just like Passin’ Through used to have. While I am not sure, maybe there is a cat as diplomat lesson to be learned there.  If not, we still have the great photo.

White Cat and the Art of Motorcycle Riding

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: Bought this photo of the cat on the motorcycle recently, and then scooped up the mate, the one with the boy, subsequently so they would stay together.  However, it is the photo of the cat alone on the bike that really appeals and gets the imagination going.  Much to my surprise, these are tiny snap shots, although with lots of information on those negs considering how nicely they blow up.  (I seem to be bad about comprehending the size of photos when I buy them online – I assume the information is there, but for some reason it seldom seems to penetrate my brain – all focused on the image.)  Don’t know much about it, but I really love this old motorcycle – barely more than a bike with an engine.  Perfect for a cat to drive…

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It brought to mind this Felix-y photo which I have already shared here (September 13,  Mysteries of Felix) which, although not a motorcycle seems to be a car of roughly the same period and, of course, another white cat.  Like the motorcycle photos those are also tiny photos – less information though and they start to disintegrate when blown up too much.

Being a non-driver myself, I cannot speak to the affinity of cats and transportation, but I suggest you watch them around your keys.

Strange Hijinxs

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: The cat photo is a recent purchase and it made me dig out the other, which I have had for years and was sitting on a shelf.  I guess it is the peering between the trees thing that scratched at my brain.  I love the photo of the cat showing his (or her) tummy in the tree, although it does make you wonder what the heck they were thinking.  I mean, if the cat liked to hang out in the tree like that, that why do you need to hold him up for the photo?  Cat looks concerned – often do in photos I have noticed.  This isn’t a large photo, about 3″x5″ and you can see where it used to fit into an album. Hmmm, wonder what else was on that page.

The other one is a photo postcard and a terrific photo.  Clearly the folks are having some fun, although I suspect the specifics might be somewhat lost to us. I like the way the dog is looking one way and the man in the tree the other. Perfect reflection in the water which adds to it too. I do wonder how I even found this photo (no cat in it to turn up on a search) which brings to mind one of the things I do not like about living in the age of eBay.  Ebay is beyond wonderful for finding things you are looking for, but is somewhat limited to what you are looking for – it is not impossible, but a bit harder to stumble on things you didn’t know about, the way you might at a flea market digging through a dusty box.  I have managed, and this photo is evidence – and I am the first to say that the good outweighs the bad!

Cat in a Box

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post:  Introducing a nice little fellow, immortalized in his (or her) favorite spot.  Anyone who has a cat knows that they can rarely resist a box.  There is, of course, the most famous box loving cat of our day, Maru:

which proves that cats the world over are the same.

And this photo helps reminds us that it has also been ever thus. People are the same too and we have loved recording our adorable darlings in their irresistible poses first in daguerreotype, then wet plate, and endlessly on film. One imagines that the “cloud” is weighed down with digital cat images and, let’s face it, where would Youtube be without them? I worry though about the future of those digital images.  Where are tomorrow’s cat pictures of today?

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Cookie examines a recently arrived package in our apartment

Tom the Fire Boat Cat

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post:  I don’t have all that much to say except that I fell in LOVE with this postcard when I saw it a few weeks ago.  I will confess that I paid dearly for it (which just shows that other people saw his charm as well), but the pain of purchase is already fading in my memory  – my pleasure with the card rapidly eclipsing the cost.

September 1910, more than a hundred years ago this month, Tom, The pride of the Fire Boat, Portland, Oregon, posed for this photo. (Yep, another wonderful photo find from the great city of Portland, OR.)  What a nice fellow!  He has a great sense of readiness about him and it is easy to imagine him helping with all the necessary boat tasks.  A very solid little citizen, nicely well-fed, muscular, but not quite fat.  And he just about qualifies as a tuxedo – I have a soft spot for those, as many of you know.  I salute Tom and I hope you enjoy him too.

We Love Our Cat Photos

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post:  I’ve acquired these photos over the past few months and in my mind they somehow are all of a kind.  The top two photos (which are postcards) are from the United States, the smaller one on the bottom is a small photo and although I purchased it from someone in the US it has im Garten (in garden?) written on the back.  So I guess this could be from Germany.

I love to look at photos of people with their cats in the newspaper or magazines – Sunday morning, reading the Times, me showing Kim a photo in the Real Estate section of a family, “Hey, nice looking cat, huh? Calico.”  Kim, “Uh huh.” (He nicely puts up with me.) Clearly, one immediate response to someone taking your photo is to pick up the family cat or dog. (I know I do.) These photos are nice examples of that. Hard for me to say when I think these are from, but I am leaning toward the teens and twenties. Of course the whole point is that we’ve always loved to photograph our beloved cats and to be photographed with them, and to photograph them as part of our family.  From blurry tintypes to the several hundred photos I have on my iPhone of Cookie and Blackie today, we love ’em – they are our family and we have always liked to take their picture.

For more early cat photo, you might want to check out my Happy Hooligan post. Enjoy!