Pam’s Pictorama Post: This was part of a much anticipated Instagram online auction that occurred last weekend. It was via a British dealer, @oldstockantiques, who had recently purchased a collection of cat related items belonging to a woman in her 90’s. (It wasn’t clear if this was an estate sale or just her divesting.)
So, after calculating the time difference, I set myself up with multiple devices for bidding. The terms of the auction required that you message the dealer for each item as it went up and this meant that I spent about an hour and 45 minutes to get through the listing of a dozen items or less. Even with my multiple devices and refreshing my feed constantly I have to report that I lost many more times than won. I can’t figure out if somehow my internet connection to England took longer or if my internet in general a tad slower than someone else’s because I will moving as fast as I could. (I’m sure you can imagine, knowing of my profound dedication to the Pictorama collection, my extraordinary frustration. However, @oldstockantiques remained patient with me and a shout out to him!)
The one that got away! Victorian cat mirror.Detail.
Nonetheless, I purchased one item (future post) and then at the end of the auction asked if there was anything unsold and I threw this lovely green cat pin dish in for good measure. Above I have shared a Victorian cat mirror that got away – alas! My bank account is happy but I am very sad.
Perhaps this little fellow didn’t sell because he has a large repair down his middle. There is nothing further to identify or edify on the back, although there are three small feet to secure it on a surface. The repair does not especially bother me and the green color is absolutely seductive. However, one of the most interesting things is that I posted about very similar dishes, cast in metal, in one of my nascent blog posts back in 2014 which can be found here. Those were purchased for a freakishly minimal amount on eBay while wandering through cat advertising items and reside on my dresser, bulging with rings, today.
Identified on the back as Corbin Lock Company, Canada. Pams-Pictorama.com collection.
While the metal duo are advertising Canadian Corbin Locks (the name is on the back), this little fellow belongs on the other side of the ocean where he boasted the virtue of Townsend & Co., New Castle. It took me a bit of time to sort through a number of companies and options before landing on Townsend & Co. Newcastle-on-Tyne, makers of fine china at the end of the 19th and into the early 20th century. (While references to it abound around items being sold, no history of the company is readily available.) I cannot be sure and I do not find another dish like this one, at least not attributable to them. (I haven’t found one advertising for anything of this vintage or precise style.) Feel free to poke holes in my theory!
Townsend & Co. did make advertising pin dishes like this one and Google tells me notably made them for a 1929 North East Coast Industries Exhibition in conjunction with a company called Mailing. The trail goes a bit cold at that point.
On sale at Etsy at the time of posting.This one has rhinestone eyes!
Meanwhile, there is now a fascination for me in the question of this mold. In casting around on the internet I saw it referred to as an old French mold, although I have yet to see specific evidence of that myself. I have seen the old metal ones both with other advertising and without any advertising – sometimes billed as ashtrays like the one on Etsy here. They are not identical – there is a slight morph – but surprisingly similar.
Below is an example of a similar mold in use by a Japanese ceramist currently. The persistence of the image is amazing across probably at least 100 years.
Contemporary, Japanese made version.
I believe this one is heading to New Jersey where it will likely reside in the bedroom or bathroom there. It’s cheerful green color and timeless kitty face will fit right in. And who knows where this cat will turn up next.
Pam’s Pictorama Post: Today I have a somewhat odd Louis Wain card which I have to assume is an early one, before he found his feline métier in the more satirical and representational vision of cats. This black one is loaded up with symbols of luck – a black cat being lucky in Great Britain, if not here in the US. (Proving them to be sensible sorts in this regard – in my opinion!)
This card was never used and is attributed to the Alphalsa Publishing Company in London. This company seems to have existed, under shifting names, between 1910 and 1930, although there is an intimation that the archive from it existed into the 1960’s when it was lost in a fire. The back of the card also identifies it as The Aloha Postcard. Louis Wain and Alpha get credit on the bottom front of this card.
A somewhat peevish Blackie on my lap the other morning. He wanted my chair.
This kit is grinning from ear to ear and doesn’t seem to mind the bag of gold piled atop his head. He has symbols of luck and prosperity tied to his tail (don’t try this at home) and around his neck – those ancient symbols (still used for their original purpose in Eastern cultures) which a decade or two later became swastikas. A horseshoe is thrown in for good measure although I was always told that they should go in the other direction in order to keep the luck from pouring out.
In addition to fortune, this card is promoting Health, Wealth and Goodluck to the Very Tail End. I like the idea that this little fellow is good luck to the tip of his tail. While not being especially superstitious about luck symbols – good or bad – I can appreciate picking up a good heads up penny now and then.
Beauregard during a recent visit to NJ.
I, of course, subscribe to the black cats are good luck theory – thank you Beauregard and Blackie! Blackie cheats it with a white badge on his chest and some hidden on his tummy. You need to look really closely at Beau (one of the Jersey five) to find a few white hairs on his chest. Kim has a theory that the white star on the chest was an evolutionary move to protect all black cats from superstitious fear.
Meanwhile, I am utterly sold on the friendly good tempered nature of male black cats which I have only discovered with these two – a longstanding tuxedo fancier I love them but they tend to another personality altogether. Cookie is a girl of course which is quite different anyway, but she is comparatively shrill and less easy going than her fraternal counterpart.
Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: It’s a cute kitten post today with this somewhat scrappy looking fellow or gal. For no particular reason I am going to say fellow – something about the build. You have to look a bit carefully to see Sautera? printed at the bottom.
This card was never mailed and there is nothing written on the back. It was produced by Reutlinger Studio, Paris. These were popular photo postcard producers at the dawn of the 20th Century. (There are a few other postcards in my collection by this Peruvian born French photographer. Those posts and more about him can be found here and here. Reutlinger evidently lost an eye to a champagne cork – how very French! A very bad for the photography business as well. And also to note, I always wrap a champagne bottle in a towel before opening.)
When I purchased this card I was thinking that this kitty was perched on a martini style glass (falling into the drink sort of thing), but instead it appears to be a glass funnel of sorts. Try as I might, I cannot figure out what is at the bottom of the funnel, pebbles perhaps? (I considered olives when I thought this was a martini glass.)
It is tucked into the glass neck of a large bottle – and in fact, even if that kit is quite small the funnel and bottle must be quite large – it would have made a truly man-sized martini in retrospect. Having said that, toward the end of his life my father became very enamored of martinis and purchased a few very large martini glasses, but perhaps not quite cat-sized.
A quick translation of Sauterna? from the French is Jumping? I guess he is planning to since curling up on or in the rim of that funnel isn’t going to do much for him. He does have a thoughtful look on his little mug though – a tiny kitten, staring into the void.
There seems to have been a series of these cards and with this very cat, which I have found online and share below. The second one seems to have been more recently appropriated.
Cats are ace jumpers. They seem to understand not only their own overall capacity for the leap, but have the ability to size up distance and other factors which you can see get calculated in their brain. Those of us who live with cats have seen them study such a situation, sometimes resulting in a preliminary butt wiggle – the tail is essential to the balancing act of the cat – especially when it is a floor up trajectory. A cat rarely misses its mark with a jump – and are very embarrassed if they do. I had a little girl tuxie, Otto Dix, who seemed to just float upward. It was as if all she needed to do was think about being somewhere and land there.
And who hasn’t stood poised in a similar, if metaphorical, position? There have been a few notable times in my life where there was a leap to be made. I always think of leaving my job at the Metropolitan Museum to go to Jazz at Lincoln Center as an enormous leap – which it was. I almost broke my neck but I found my footing eventually.
The more recent vocational leap was to the animal hospital I raise money for and that was less dramatic, but a bit of a leap nonetheless. (Posts about those professional leaps of faith can be found here, here and here, although much of my time at Jazz was shared in the annals of this blog.) I am still finding my sea legs on that one so the jury remains out.
Bonus picture of Cookie and Blackie from early this morning – rare sleeping together pose!
Pam’s Pictorama Post: Kicking off the Memorial Day weekend with this somewhat military cat card. Given the general lack of sympathy among cats for each other (some special cases notwithstanding) this gray kit has a tough time convincing his rather intense superior officer that he is under the weather. The long paw of the law as represented by this black cat, cap forward, is very upright as he judges this underling wanting. I love our cat Blackie but boy, I wouldn’t want him judging me – he’d look just like this I think. It’s an odd card and it was the black cat in particular that sold me on it. (Of course Blackie is constantly judging us – not to mention his sister Cookie!)
The two tiny identifying markers on the front of the card are Oilette and FEM. The tracks on FEM are obscured or gone but I am told that Oilette seems to be best known as a series of postcards that were made to look like oil paintings for the famed Tuck postcard company, as opposed to this very water color like illustration. Someone drawing it really knew cats however. This is a Tuck card as well.
The postmark is obscured but it was mailed from Clapham SW and probably on November 17. It is addressed to Miss C. Steer, Lower Froyle, Nr Alton, Hants. The recipient appears to be the sister of the writer who pens, Dear Con, just a card, we received the parcel safely and very many thanks for them, Margie was going to write but she has so many home lessons (?) to do. Sorry Mothers feet are so bad hope they will be better love to D and of course Mother and yourself. Yours best from us all. xxxxx An additional note was added in pencil at the top, received mother’s letter this morning 8.11.17. Even today Lower Froyle seems to be a fairly remote part of Hampshire according to Google.
This takes me to a bit of a tangent sick leave seems to be something that is being phased out, or perhaps it just is where I work now. Instead of sick leave there are PTO days and you can use them for sick or annual leave. (Not sure how Planned Time Off is waking up with the sniffles but okay I guess.) There is additional accrued sick leave for more substantial illness, surgery and the like and you need a doc’s note to take that.
As someone who doesn’t take a lot of sick leave it doesn’t especially affect me a lot, but it seems like a bad trend and a bit unfriendly too – like this card. I do believe that if folks are sick they should stay home and get better. Covid should have taught us that if nothing else and I don’t especially want to get sick because they have come to the office rather than take the day off. Meanwhile, I have substantial oral surgery coming up and I did get a note from my doc and will take a day and a half of medical leave for it – its on the Thursday so I am going to assume with the weekend I will be back in the saddle on the Monday.
These are a bit bleak, if somewhat military associated, as thoughts go on the first (if cloudy and cold) morning of a three day holiday weekend. (Former Memorial Day posts attest to the routine cold and wetness of my childhood living near the beach. One can be found here.) Tomorrow I head to New Jersey where I will, somewhat belatedly, get my dahlias planted in pots on the porch to start the season. I believe there are some geraniums blooming in the kitchen that can go back out front in those pots where they will be cheerful and deer deterring. We’ll hope for a jollier post tomorrow!
Pam’s Pictorama Post: Today we have more from the deep well of postcards purchased a few months ago. This is an odd card, part of a series that seemed to all be along this sort of theme of two cats snubbing one.
On my card it there is the name Hochhausler with a distinct initial E although I see them with a first initial A online. Either way Hochhausler has not left much of a trail to be picked up online and it isn’t clear to me, but I think this is the producer of cards rather than the artist, however hard to say.
Someone has written on both sides of this card, contributing a bit of drama to the overall effect. At the bottom of the front in pencil, stand over Tom and let Puss eat the bread without salt and then, under the black and white tabby holding the music, Puss and the other identified as Tommy. Seems to me that it is the other cat they should be worried about. (Incidentally, it seems that something was written and erased, now illegible, under the other cat.) And who among us with cats hasn’t had to ensure that one doesn’t eat it all – Blackie, I’m talking about you!
Meanwhile, we have two snotty cats being mean to the third. All three are striped tabby types and the one is skulking away (as cats will) tail tucked where we can’t see it. Clearly these other two are rule the roost popular types that one meets as a youngster. Poor kit! Meanwhile, Tommy has a book under his arm which has Reich Commers (?) inscribed on the front. The card predates the world wars so it can’t be a reference to Reich Commerce and so the sharpness of the commentary somewhat lost on us. This belongs to a series of cat cards with this two against one as a theme, but I was unable to share the few scant further examples from the internet.
This series would likely be in response to the popularity of Louis Wain at the time and people trying to cop his take on social intercourse via cat drawings. This would perhaps go in the, it’s harder than it looks category of cards as the acid take falls a bit flatter than the Wain equivalent which would laugh up its sleeve at the full of themselves instigators as well.
Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.
On the back of the card it says, I am getting along fine with the cats. They take their places fine but puss has never come back. I am going to bake bread today but am going to sell (?) it. It is addressed to Carrie Duckworth–Chariton R.R. Iowa c/o Earnest Duckworth. The cancellation is hard to read but appears to be August, 1902. We can see that this postcard series was distributed in Europe as well as in the US, my guess is that it is European in origin.
The card is unsigned – clearly the recipients were just expected to know who sent it. Oh my. Now I am worried about Puss who never came back. She sounds very blithe about the cats left in her care! And there is the remark about letting Puss eat the bread without salt. Hmmm. (I happen to like salt on my buttered bread but maybe not what she is referring to?)
I will be left hoping that Puss either came home or found better digs elsewhere as roaming cats will if their needs are not fully met – and perhaps even if they are. I read many stories online about cats who beg in neighborhoods and are fed by a number of people assuming they are strays and the only one feeding them. One day they are otherwise enlightened as someone identifies themselves as the kit’s owner – proving however in a sense that no one ever really owns a cat.
Pam’s Pictorama Post: Since cats, both real and cartoon, are more or less my gig I’m surprised that I am only now learning about Bunz, the hardware store tabby, who rules the roost a few blocks away here in our Yorkville neighborhood at a place simply called New York Paint and Hardware. However, it turns out that Bunz is quite the neighborhood celebrity and somehow I have missed him entirely. Kim has had a nodding acquaintance with him on his morning walks, but says that to date, Bunz is usually being petted while getting his morning air so Kim has not actually met to pet him either. Although this establishment is within my territory, I tend to walk by in the evening or run in late in the afternoon of a weekend, I have not seen him. I feel remiss.
The hardware store in question – there is a mural devoted to NYC on the side which is hard to see – more sincere than good. I do wonder if it is the same guy.
There is a strange quality about living in New York which we all accept, but rarely discuss and that is one generally has a set path from your apartment out into the world – an unofficial number of blocks where you shop and eat locally and often you are more devoted to one direction than the other. When running I would hit the tip of the eastern point of the neighborhood and then down the south side which I got to know and because of work, I spend a lot of time walking south on York and First and know it well, but we mostly don’t go south to eat, get take out or shop. (Having previously worked at the Metropolitan Museum I also know the path west intimately but oddly this is a north south thing, not an east west thing.) I speak to people who live on 85th and typically never go north of 86th and I don’t find that unusual.
I have on occasion documented aspects of Friday night take out stroll here at Deitch Studio. (See my pre-pandemic post which was an ode to local take out and a Mexican place we were fond of. Read it here.) This is our walk north most Fridays, often veering west to Second Avenue after a stroll up First. On First I generally like to stop and look in the window of the junk store there. (Some excellent finds from this store have been documented and can be found here and here.) Kim peers a bit at a newish thrift store nearby too. Sometimes the kitties need some food from the pet store on that block and we’ll pick it up on the way.
Me as model – thank you Kim for the pic!
We tend to fiercely embrace our corner of this Yorkville neighborhood. We mourn the tearing down of a brownstone building resulting in the loss of a nice plant store on the corner, the demise of a take out place. The pandemic made us hyper aware of our neighborhood since we rarely left it for a year, but since then and with the effects of the Q line which opened in 2017, the neighborhood has become more popular and shifted. However, generally speaking it is a good corner of the universe, these few blocks of Manhattan all the way over by the river.
Window of the nearby junk store from a prior post.
And, since cats are my thing, I like to think I know a bit about where they reside in the nabe – those who sit in apartment windows daily on my path (I’m talking about you Mr. Tuxedo on the first floor of this building), and a smattering of those felines we think of as bodega cats, the working kitties of the area. Interesting to note that, to my knowledge, the few I am thinking of are all tabbies. Perhaps the tiger stripe of cats is the unofficial mascot of the Yorkville working puss? The only one of the three I have met is a charming youngster on York Avenue who lives in a Deli. I’m not sure that his name is known but I did just find him on a Google search while looking for the cat who evidently patrols the Gristedes on York nightly. His pleasure includes a tree outside the deli where pigeons occasionally perch to tempt him.
I only know of the Gristedes cat because someone I used to work with walks his young lab pup there nightly and the dog became fascinated with the cat in the window after hours on late night strolls. They have a joyous spitty, barking, hissy moment nightly. Mark looked into it and evidently found evidence that the cat is identified as an employee on some paperwork he stumble across in a professional capacity (yes, odd, I agree), although when asked his existence is routinely denied. He is a mouser incognito if extraordinaire as technically he is not allowed to live there.
I came home to this corner on First and 86 being torn down a few months ago.
This past Friday night on our way to pick up dinner (from a new place with an extraordinarily large and diverse menu called Soup and Burger on Second), I noticed this t-shirt in the window of the hardware and paint store on the corner of 87th and First. I pointed it out to Kim and we agreed it is well done.
To backtrack a bit, I have lived in Yorkville long enough that I remember a few decades back (30 years evidently) when this store was the new kid on the block. Ostensibly a paint store with a bit of hardware it did not seem especially useful and I ignored it for a long time. It replaced, to my vague memory, an electronics store which repaired televisions and VCR’s and I had utilized that service. (Yep, seriously dating myself here although we actually still own a VCR/DVD player or two, or three.)
View of First Avenue from inside Taco Today, taken waiting for our Friday night order back in ’19.
Anyway, I don’t know that I darkened their door for years. Slowly however, the hardware aspect took over and it developed a less chain oriented more neighborhood vibe. They are now depended upon for our general local hardware needs (they are the last of several standing) and a look at their website earlier today reveals that I can get my knives sharpened there and I think I will pay them a visit for that. It is funny though how even a chain store can evolve into a neighborhood joint.
So evidently Bunz, this sprightly tabby, rules the roost over there. I suspect that hardware stores must keep some mouse friendly stock which requires the services of such a kitty – planting soil and whatnot. I know of a few Lowe’s and Home Depots that sport Instagram accounts for their flagship cat employees. (Notably there is Leo, another tabby, in a Home Depot in Mt. Laurel, NJ and Francine, a calico mix at a Lowe’s in North Carolina.) Garden supplies and a very old building in the case of our neighborhood store which probably makes it a mousy delight.
Francine, the Lowe’s catLeo, the Home Depot kitty
We didn’t stop on Friday night but I made a mental note to come back on the weekend so we went on Saturday and yes – they were selling the t-shirts and I realized that there was a big stack, organized by size, on a rack by the window. The Bunz tee cost $20 (Kim paid – thank you Kim!) and I got a large but they run a tad small. I asked about the artist and the young man waiting on me just said Shawn which makes me think maybe it is someone else who works there, a nascent illustrator.
It’s a bold design and has hardware cattitude going for it. Bunz sports workman’s overalls, hightops and shades – a cool cat. Both his overalls and his top (striped like him) have his name. Paws in pockets – he is all business. He appears to have a can of paint and brush in front of him and the sign for the store behind him – a decent rendition of the window looking in. Kim says he would personally have made more of the second color and I tend to agree, but these are artistic choices, right? I hoped that maybe their website or account would have his origin story and perhaps where his name came from but alas, currently not.
Bunz from their IG accountHis fame is growing.
So finally I share photos of the real Bunz. He’s clearly a beloved member of the team there and what he might lack in a typical home life seems to be largely made up for by being a working cat with an appreciative following here in Yorkville. Long may he remain at the helm of New York Paint and Hardware.
Pam’s Pictorama Post: A few weeks ago I posted another postcard by Maurice Boulanger, a Wain wannabe. Boulanger’s cats have their very own maniacal streak although perhaps they lack the intellect of Wain’s calculating cats of the same period. (The earlier post can be found here.) I noted that this card was a bit more saccharine and I’m not sure I actually find it thus today as I look at its nuttiness.
This somewhat tatty card came from the same sale that has supplied Pictorama with numerous posts since March, a big buy that keeps on giving. This was from a set of no less than six – I saw the set in mint condition in an auction, but could only share these three below.
Daisies are clearly the theme here and the fluffy white cat blends a bit with the giant one she is holding. Interesting that there is a green leaf hanging off the daisy stem. The kitties hold paws (albeit a bit awkwardly) and somehow he stretches one long paw arm around her. She has a nice big bow on too. They look at each other with adoring googly eyes. More daisies decorate the border in a very Arts and Crafts pattern of the time and it climbs down the card behind the fellow. Next to the girl kitty it says, He loves me! He loves me not! He loves me!
I myself never actually picked daisies (or therefore did this sort of calculating if someone love me) as a child. Weirdly where I grew up did not seem to produce wild daisies. We had an abundance of dandelions but few daisies. I always think that illustrations like this are more like the giant Gerber ones, more often in bright colors, that need planting and tending but are worth the effort.
Gerber Daisies – maybe I should plant some?
It looks like this card was in an album as the four corners are nibbled away, probably held in by those black paper triangles. For all of that it is a bit bent and something white has spotted the surface if you look carefully – this makes me feel like this card was well loved however.
Written on the back is Paul Starr and Joanna Penna and a $2 notation. (I didn’t pay a lot but more than $2.) It was never mailed so it is undated.
I love the unbridled nuttiness of this card and in fact the entire series. I know little about Mr. Boulanger but clearly he had a charmingly whacky streak and his jolly kits are still hot stuff today.
Pam’s Pictorama Post: I have written before about Blackie and his adventures at the vet – these adventures (five days in the ICU there) which ultimately radically influenced my leaving Jazz at Lincoln Center for the huge change and challenge of raising money for this remarkable and unusual animal hospital here in New York City. (That pivotal post can be found here.) Today is an all about animals post.
Most recently over Thanksgiving we had to haul the little fellow in because he wasn’t eating and I was treated to the ER experience of our visitors (over a holiday – always a holiday or weekend, or the middle of the night I say) and I wrote about it here.
Blackie is now a thirteen year old diabetic cat who requires insulin daily. Although we’ve tried pinning a monitor on him to track his sugar it either falls out or he cheerfully tears it off – I can’t blame him I’m sure. He can’t understand why someone would stick such a thing in him. It would be life changing however if we could track his sugar, like a human, and adjust it to at least major trends. Instead, we have to pack him up periodically and take him over.
People both professionally and personally ask me about pet insurance and my answer is usually that with seven cats there’s no way I can afford insurance. It would have been nice to figure out that he should have it early on but no, it was before it was really prevalent. Meanwhile, Blackie has long been in the lead for cost of health care however and I am relieved to blunt it some with a staff discount. (For the record, our vets urge people to get insurance for their pets.)
Taking Blackie to the vet (or anywhere – think trips to NJ) is an ordeal. Somehow through magic cat radar he intuits our intentions bizarrely early in the process. (What are the tells I wonder? How do we keep tipping him off?) The result is him heading to the one spot under our bed where we cannot reach him without taking the mattress off of said bed. This is an athletic feat to say the least.
However, the little fellow has been drinking a lot of water and is looking a bit thin so I finagled an appointment and this week we took him over for a sugar check. Kim was very crafty and got him in the carrier very early. He was unusually quiet on this trip, not his usual yowling.
A pensive Blackie on my lap the other morning.
We got there very early and he was taken to the new feline unit (recently named by a generous donor) in the bowels of our building – a new tower in the final stages of completion which is appended onto the original 60’s white brick building. He was extremely unimpressed although it is so much nicer than where he has stayed previously – a cramped space about a third of the size and cheek by jowl with noisier dogs who are also there for a stay. The new space is reserved for cats (and the occasional bunny) and is very quiet and calm. I am told that it is a favorite place for LVT’s (like nurses at an animal hospital) to want to work in and that the cats are responding well to it. Cages have space for litter boxes and a hideaway area. Blackie embraced the hideaway. (Shown in the photo at the top in his cage – this taken by one of my colleagues, Erica, who stopped by to give him some pets.)
It always interests me where the personal pet parent and the professional fundraising for the hospital cross and this is what I was thinking about when I started this post today. Although I get frustrated with the pace of change there and what I am trying to accomplish, I am always so incredibly impressed and grateful for the superb care that Blackie gets. It is very real inspiration to get back on it and move forward. The new space as a result of money received through our capital campaign is a tangible result. It helps to blunt and curb my daily frustrations.
Hard to know, but this is Blackie signaling that I should leave my work chair and let him have it.
Blackie’s sugar was very high so we have increased his insulin. Additional blood tests came back okay so we think the weight loss (not insignificant, several pounds) is related to that. As always, the thoroughness and thoughtfulness of the team inspires and reinvigorates me.
Due to the blood tests Blackie came home with a bright red bandage on his hind leg. As he hopped out of the carrier (always amazed to be back home) he made pretty short shrift of joyfully tearing it off and sending it flying! Later that evening I got a thoughtful text from one of the interns or residents who referenced the bandage and said I should feel free to take it off. I told them of Blackie’s gleefully disposal of it and they laughed. He goes back in a month for a check up, but we are relieved and grateful for his relative clean bill of health.
Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: Today’s card is so painted and embellished that I almost hesitated to say it was a photo but of course it is. There was something about this card when I spotted it recently, the evocative mood of this little girl and kitty, that appealed to me. She is dressed up for her photo and posing nicely for the camera but so is puss. (While not quite enthused he is submitting his beautiful Persian self passively to the pose anyway.)
I grab up Blackie like this not infrequently. Cats don’t especially like to be hugged and held this way, especially while you are not seated and if it isn’t their idea, but he will permit me that. Once in a rare while Cookie is hounding me for attention and I will even pick her up and carry her around for a few minutes. Oddly it quiets her down but to do it of my own accord would be inviting wounds.
A somewhat peevish and demanding Blackie on my lap in front of the tangle of junk on my desk.
Little almost glowing dots of paint have been applied to the trim on the little girl’s dress, like tiny pearls, probably even brighter when the card was new and cleaner. Her hair ribbon is sumptuously velvety holding her abundant curls, a gold bracelet on her arm. An artificial blush to her cheeks and rosiness to her lips have been applied via a paint brush in the same tones as the flowers on her dress. She is not a child having her photo taken for her doting parents, she is hired for this reproduction card.
I’m not sure I really have many other photos in my collection that are like this although they exist in abundance. It relates most closely to the sort of birthday greeting cards of a small child and Felix that I might have,
I cannot blame cats for disliking that loss of autonomy. I am quite sure if I was small enough to be carried about I would resent it as well and I feel a bit guilty every time I turn the bathroom water off while Blackie has commandeered the sink there. He would of course have me turn it on and off all day and I have other plans for my time but it is unfortunate he has been unable to acquire the needed skill.
I always had a strong disliked not being in charge of my own destiny, even in the smallest sense, since I was a child. I was a quiet kid but I remember that I seethed a bit at the casual bouncing to and fro you are subjected to as a small child – left to stay with grandma or required to go somewhere or do something when you would prefer not to. I looked forward to adulthood as the end of that and I was right. Some of that attitude has lingered, although my reluctance to learn to drive a car has bedeviled it a bit – if you cannot drive you are dependent on others, unless of course you live in New York City which I do for the most part.
Back of card.
The back of the card shows it was mailed on June 20, 1912 – although the year is a bit obscured. It was mailed to the Missis Speedays in Keswick, but I cannot see if it says where it was mailed from. In a bold black hand it says, I am enjoying myself very much. I don’t think I will come home when you come back. Peter. We’ll assume it was tongue in cheek but there is something about it that maybe seems a bit serious too. Alas, what were the Misses doing in Keswick and where was Peter? Poor Peter was left out.
Despite what I wrote earlier, Blackie is on my lap and positively insisting on hugs and pets – both handed mind you. It isn’t just what we don’t want, but equally the attention we insist on too. I suppose this holds for people as well as cats.
Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: Another in the long line of postcards from the show earlier this month. Although I am somewhat judicious in my acquisition of this avenue of cat photography they do slip in occasionally. Pictorama readers know I have a bit of a weak spot especially for kittens posing with the moon cards. (Read about one of those here.) Cats in clothes can be worthy of my notice, like this one.
Recent photo of Milty, senior cat of NJ.
This senior fellow of a puss in this picture is peeved at his human constructed accoutrements. Maybe his longstanding role at the photo studio was more mouser than model normally – he is an elder statesman of cats no doubt and I am sure claws in teeth sufficed for his real world duties. (He reminds me of my cat Milty whose age seems to hover in the early 20’s.)
Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.
Someone has given him a tiny sword to wear at his side and a homemade tri-corner hat with plume stuck in, but again he seems decidedly displeased with the decoration. He does have a battle weary mug and the aging physique of an old guy. His tail must be wrapped around him on the other side as no sign of it. His white paws are a bit grotty and the whites around his chin not quite white any longer either. His fur is that of an elderly cat.
The card has a copyright by the Rotograph Company from 1906 on the front. And this particular one was mailed in 1909, on August 13 from North Hackensack, NJ. It was mailed to Miss D. A. Brown, River Edge, NJ. I was not familiar with River Edge and it turns out to be near Paramus in northern Jersey.
The slightly illegible back of the card.
I have to say, although the handwriting on the face of it looks legible I am having trouble decoding the message address to Dolores. A card from Dolores seems to have arrived by a later train then it should have and there are plans here for the evening in question. It gives some thoughts about places they may go (Maeks? she has written clearly) and R.E. and ends with instruction to come in the surrey with your Dexter and it is signed Aunt Lila. Of course I can’t be sure but Aunt Lila probably didn’t care what card she grabbed for this purpose, however she too may have been aptly named The Commanding Officer. Just a guess.
Actually, I pulled this card out of the stack because I think I too am a bit weary from my roles and responsibilities right now as captain of this particular ship. Demands of work, taxes, wrapping up my mother’s estate and even the imperative to make soup on this rainy Saturday, seems like more than I should have taken on – however understanding that much of it arrived unbidden and of its own accord. Maybe it is just a case of the April blues, but this commanding officer (such as I am) is tired today and I too would prefer to lose the yoke of tiny sword and hat and romp freely for a bit.
Pam's Pictorama 