Family

Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: I feel like I used to find more photos like this one for the Pictorama archive. I discovered this on eBay. Unfortunately it is quite faded, I have even assisted it a bit here. Still, this family with their mostly matching haircuts and each girl sporting a member of a kitten family was too good resist.

This photo postcard was never mailed and the clothes on the kids are sort of timeless, but I would guess maybe the 1920’s or 30’s. They are posed by the “side of the house” from what I can figure. I would say spring considering the shortness of the grass, the clothes and of course the kittens they hold.

*My sister Loren in an undated photo I keep next to my desk at home. Judging from the car I would say from the early 1980’s.* *If I was in NJ I might find a photo of all of us. Will have to wait!*

You can’t really see it easily but there is a great variety in kittens here. From left to right we have a tortie, a tabby, a sort of gray soft stripe and a gray tuxie. Not at all impossible that they are all from the same litter however.

These kids are clearly also of the same litter! Far from identical, however there is a strong family resemblance brought out further by their matching bowl style hair cuts. Each one wears it a bit differently though – bangs aside or straight, one where they are cropped short. The girl in the plaid dress is clearly the eldest but the exact order of the others is left to our musing.

A close look at their faces and the girls look more alike to each other than they do with the man who I have been assuming is dad. Family resemblance is a strange thing I always think. Sometimes I am sitting on the subway or walking down the street and a family passes and all I can think is that they could never deny all being related. This always comes to mind in my reading of early novels (someone denying a child is theirs) and this was satisfied as a plot point in a Rose Mulholland novel recently – the striking resemblance to her father could not be denied! More on that possibly as a tomorrow post.

*A still young Cookie and Blackie bearing some resemblance here.*

My family sort of mixed and matched with familial likeness – not looking alike, stronger resemblance to one parent when young and then another. My sister and I, she of the curly hair and I of the straight, never looked much alike however once someone who knew me from work walked up to my brother and announced we must be siblings. (We were at a rare moment, like these girls, when we were sporting approximately the same haircut.)

My brother may be surprised to hear me say it but, although he and I have always looked more strongly like my mother’s side of the family, I saw a recent photo where he looks very much like our father. (I think it is the beard Edward.) Kim has a rather extraordinary family likeness with his brothers and I gather his fraternal grandmother from whom he inherited his distinctive eyes. There is an additional family resemblance though also to both his mother and his father.

This is of course also true for cats and cat families. My mom used to quote from an old genetics text that this kind of cat and that kind of cat likely to produce this or this cat. I could never keep it straight.

There are days when you can tell that Cookie and Blackie hatched from the same mom and dad combo. Other times, Cookie being smaller, mightier and a tuxie to Blackie’s bigger all black handsomeness makes it appear as if there is no resemblance.

*Beau (left) and Blackie meet for the first time.*

The one litter of kittens I grew up with bore a remarkable resemblance to each other (variations on gray and tabby striped), but not to their mother (Winkie, a tortie) at all. And for that reason perhaps, she utterly disowned any knowledge of them after a point. I have commented on how Blackie and Beauregard (the all black male kitty of the Jersey Five) stared at each other, clearly in recognition of the fact that they looked alike. (A post about the New York cats meeting the New Jersey cats can be found here.)

It is too bad no one thought to include the mom cat in this photo – assuming she was a denizen of the same household. It would have rounded things out nicely. It is fun to speculate that the cats and the kids grew up over time side by side.

Everything’s Swell!

Posted by Pam's Pictorama

Pam’s Pictorama Post: It’s impossible for me to see this card without hearing a certain sort of cartoon cat voice from my childhood – vaguely sarcastic, probably based on a motion picture idea of what a citified gangster sounded like. His friend and sidekick would reply, Yeah, right boss!

This is among the last of the cards I bought at the big postcard show over the summer. (Never fear, there’s another show coming in early October.) This card looks like it could have been drawn by one of those cartoon animators as a side gig. It has a pro feeling to it. The cat on the fence with the big orange sun setting – a glowing sunset behind the fence we realize when we really look. We get a peek at a yellow field and a house behind. It is as if the world is very beautiful glowing yellow and civilized just on the other side of the fence from where these three cats gather.

The two males on the fence seem to be tuning up for a night of caterwauling, while the girl cat belongs to someone who has place a bow around her neck. I guess she matriculates through both worlds. There is a garbage can which has overflowed – I guess that can be investigated and raided later if the boys need a snack.

*Blackie and Cookie on the bed recently. They have only just reconciled with each other upon our return to the NYC apartment.*

Not surprisingly it has me in mind of what we called alley cats when I was a kid and which occurs to me right now to be a term you don’t really hear any longer. (Do we no longer have alleys? Or are cats no longer their denizens?) Instead we talk about strays and feral cats – terms people seem to use interchangeably which arguably are not. Domestic cats that have been abandoned are now strays but they are not feral.

I have written about our first stray found when I was a small child, Zipper. (I wrote about him and other tabbies I have known in a post here. Zipper’s interest in our tropical fish can be found here.) He was a classic alley cat, a tabby with a broken tail where the tip was always at an angle. Mom rescued him outside the laundry one day (this was before we had our own washer and dryer – yes, we’re talking quite a long time ago) where some boys were abusing him.

Zipper was super scrappy though and grew into a beautiful cat. I suspect in retrospect that our rather prim but gentle domestic cat Snoopy was probably utterly shocked by him. He kept his streetwise wits about him and became a ringleader of the neighborhood cats of the time. (Our cats were of the indoor/outdoor variety at the time.) Zips would round up his buddies and make raids on an eel box kept for bait up the street. What pussycat parties those appeared to be! Puking for days after and a need to hose down the garage. These two on the card would have happily attended and then gotten into a few fights.

*Mr. Miltie, our old, old timer.* *A long ago rescue from Newark.*

Spending time outside our cats would get into scraps and occasionally come home with a gaping wound which would eventually abscess and require a trip to the vet. Once I remember my mother couldn’t find a cat carrier and stuffed Zipper into a picnic basket which he promptly chewed right through – head sticking out and therefore somewhat stuck, on our the way there.

All of this was brought back to me by a snippet on Instagram this morning about a British woman and her son finding a cat in the backyard and enticing him inside over a period of a couple of years. Reminds me of our Hobo in New Jersey who we never were able to get inside and who disappeared last year. They call him Boysie, another tabby, and it was a bad wound that finally made them urge him inside and to the vet.

*Gus, on the bed. He came to the backdoor in NJ one winter. He can’t decide if he wants to be petted all the time or is afraid to at all.*

Now we have dedicated people doing TNR (trap, neuter and release) of cat colonies which have mercifully cut down their numbers. Strays with docked ears show this has been done and our Stormy bears that evidence. Here in Manhattan strays are much less common than they once were even in my lifetime. Still, Stormy and Gus both came to the backyard at Mom’s and the other three were otherwise rescued, Beau and Miltie from Newark and Peaches from a basement in Long Branch. We know that shelters are full to overflowing and I am told that in the spring a never ending parade of kittens were dropped at our doors at work despite our not even being a shelter.

Recently an older friend lost her sister unexpectedly and the sister had just adopted a stray. I was very tempted to invite her to join the tribe although eight might truly be the tipping of that scale.

Peaches. I actually touched her for the first time recently. She was asleep on a chair and did not appreciate it. Peaches will generally only let me get within a foot or two of her. Still, she seems very happy. Stretches and rolls around. Just a no-touch kinda girl.

I think of our cat companions and how very special they are. Cookie is asleep atop a Chewy box surveying her kingdom as I write and Blackie is wondering if he looks longingly enough I will give him a Churu treat. (I am the soft touch for these and secretly am always trying to put a bit more weight on Blackie. He is a willing participant.) It makes me sad to think of those kitties that could have happy lives in homes but don’t get the chance. Here’s to finding them all their very best homes.

Postcards – Behold the Beginning of the Stash

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: Readers from last week know that Kim and I went to a postcard show, held in the West Village, where I purchased my way through a whole lotta postcards. I came away with holdings that I will be working my way through for the foreseeable future. I am hoping you enjoy the launch of what I can promise will be a varied trip.

I am kicking off this visual feast with one of my favorites from the pile. Although there is a nominal kitten here, it is the attitude of this beautiful young woman I love. It is a suggestive card but her energy and winning charm are amazing. Our woman is looking right at us and pointing at You out there. Her be-flowered hat is placed properly on her head and she sports a pretty necklace if you look carefully, a tiny opal or pearl at its center. (I will vote for opal as we know I am partial to them.)

I own a few other somewhat salacious cat cards, the French produced a line of them around this time. One of those prior posts, photo below, can be found here.

*French card. Pams-Pictorama.com collection. Another unhappy camera ready kitty!*

She is wearing what I guess would have been called a petticoat although that is a bit generic and people who know about these things would probably know a more precise way to describe this chemise. Although it looks like tights she wears I assume that these were sort of the regulation stockings of the day, although with her little low boot shoes.

She supports the kitten with the other hand, his hold on the back of the chair is otherwise tenuous. It is a tiny tabby kitten – and actually close study shows he has no grip on the chair back at all – and that he is not especially pleased with his part in this proceeding. Kitten career as prop. I believe about his world at the time that he could have done worse than working for his living in front of the camera. Maybe he grew up to have a sideline in mousing at the studio. (Blackie is on my lap and I just inquired about whether he’d be up to a mouse if presented with one. He seems on the fence.)

This card was never sent, like so many of these postcards. There is an odd torn edge along the left side. Somehow it feels like it was torn way back in the day at the point of origin, or near to it. It was evidently once sold for 87 cents – I paid a lot more than that I assure you. Someone has also written 1900 but that might just be their guess too.

I can’t actually say I am partial to those cards that were never used although less beat up. The tiny missives on the back (sometimes a bit of cheeky text added to the front) of those that were sent always thrill me. They are windows into a brief moment in a life and I sort of treasure that.

Goodbye to Earth

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: Today’s card wandered in via eBay. It belongs to a series of such images made by various studios and photographers contemporaneously including a favorite I own and blogged about previously here and here. What is it about kittens drifting along in the sky that proves so irresistible? This pair looks remarkably unconcerned about their voyage.

This rather identical pair sit in a small basket which is almost entirely obscured by the darkness at the bottom of the photo. I can’t imagine they packed many provisions for a trip all the way to the moon. Such small fellows, can’t expect them to plan well I guess. It is a benign looking (paper?) moon they are heading toward, smiling kindly, so I am sure it will be fine.

*Is it a coincidence that these kittens look pretty much identical to today’s pusses? Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.*

A close look reveals that the “balloon” is actually a small ball (label almost visible on the right) covered in a small fish next and with a string on top to produce the clever effect of a floating balloon. At the bottom it says Goodbye to Earth and the maker, Rotary Photo, E.C. is noted. On the left it is blurry where the photo was laid down to be reshot for the card but it says something A.

I have probably written about Rotary which back in its day was a bonanza producer of such cards and one could devote oneself to a collection made up solely of cute cat cards produced by these folks – I don’t seem to have ended up owning many however. I sometimes imagine a studio with kittens in various stages of growth bounding around. I don’t want to know what happed to the grown kitties – bet there was nary a mouse around there though!

On the back of this card it notes that it was Printed in England. It was never mailed. In the ten years I have been producing Pictorama posts (yep, we are hard on an actual 10 year anniversary as it believe it was July of ’14 – yay Pictorama!) I think this is the first time I have encountered an item that seemed to have a message for me. For whatever reason I had not read it before purchasing the card.

*The German version I posted about back in 2014. Link above for post. Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.*

Some folks know that I have been in the midst of some ongoing, and at times extremely painful, oral surgery. Among other things it has kept me from running and in general has pretty much made me remarkably miserable. However, as we head into this summer holiday week I especially enjoyed the message in a neat script penned on the back – no note who it is to or from – This so all our cares for a week or so more, and our return will be much like a fall would be to the “pussies”. A safe July 4 week landing to all!

Mitten Kittens

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: These inquiring little fellows caught my eye and I liked how the writing was stenciled into the negative of this very old card. Clearly something entertaining was used to capture their attention just off camera. The tabby in the middle has moved a bit and is a tad blurry as a result. I suspect this handful of kits was used again and again as models at the studio. The feet of the two tuxies are huge and those must have grown up to be some big cats.

Kittens and mittens to back at least as far as the Mother Goose poem which has verses where the kits in turn loose their mittens, find their mittens, soil them and then wash them. The verse ends oddly however with Mama smelling a rat nearby. I suspect ratty was dinner, however the thought is never finished and an odd one to end the poem on. (In its entirely it can be found here.)

*My copy of The Fur Person by May Sarton.*

The term making mittens refers, as far as I know, to a cat kneading with claw paws. I didn’t grow up with that term however. That action was always starfish paws to us, or mushing when we were very little. I call them claw paws these days especially with my kitties whose claws have grown too long I’m afraid. The term starfish paws came to us via a volume by May Sarton, The Fur Person, a wonderful book chock-a-block with cat love and lore which I have written about previously and that post can be found here. Blackie has a bad habit of doing it while sitting on my lap and my knees are scarred with his ongoing and intense ministrations.

There are many photos of be-mittened cats on the internet, the indignities which I will ignore except to say that folks have hung onto the idea over time.

Although this card has a somewhat homemade look, it is the product of a large professional studio. Stenciled neatly at the bottom is Pesha Photo. This turns out to be Louis James Pesha who owned the eponymous Pesha Postcard Company of Michigan. His work is largely known best for his photos of the Great Lakes region and enjoys some ongoing popularity today. To my knowledge I have not purchased other cat cards made by him previously. A quick Google search reveals mostly the aforementioned landscape and water views.

*Pesha Photo not in Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.*

Mr. Pesha was born in Ontario, Canada in 1868 and moved to the United States in ’01 starting his photo studio then. Evidently at first he specialized in cards like this one, popular subjects and trick photos. He had long photographed the landscapes, railroads and scenes around him and began printing and selling those as postcards later on.

*An automobile, seating what are believed to be his wife and son [?], is parked in front of one of Louis Pesha’s photo studios. Dave Burwell Collection, Sarnia Historical Society.*

Pesha dies tragically young in a car accident (he owned a luxury steam engined car purchased from the White Automobile company and I wonder if the one shown above is the car in question) in October of 1912 while visiting his parents. He was only 42 and he leaves a young daughter (no mention of a son in his online bio) and widow who continues the business until postcards pass out of fashion in the early ’20’s.

My card has an indicia pressed into the lower right corner which I assume also marks it as a Pesha card but is illegible and I depended on the writing on the bottom, Pesha Photo 1517, etched into the bottom.

This card was sent at 3 PM on January 21, 1911 from an unidentified location to Mr. Elmer Rosbury in Toledo, Ohio under General Delivery no less, and received by the post office at 9 AM the next day. (Much better delivery than we can hope for these days I might add.) The writing is in pencil and it is difficult to read. As far as I can tell it reads, Dear Elmer: – Will write tomorrow had a girl Friend down from Minders (?) and we went to this Farmers Blow Out last night. With love from Ethel.

With my best Caturday wishes to all!

Flying Dutch Kitties

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: There are endless examples of early images of kittens dressed up and doing cute human-type things. However, I have never purchased one until this one hit my radar recently. It just cracks me up! As you can see by the writing, it is Dutch. A very rough translation gratis Google tells me that this is a bit of advertising and the back informs the recipient (this one not used) that the vendors hope to see them this week and that they offer high value for their orders – whatever those might be. The front makes reference to “our kitties which will soon be in the air!” (Any readers who speak Dutch please reply below!) What were these kitties selling? I’m buying!

I am always threatening to dress the cats up and take their photo – Kim begs me not to injure their dignity that way and I am brought to my senses. This image strikes me as a perfect marriage of low tech and professional – like those glorious ‘homemade’ cars and machines the Little Rascals used to have. I especially love the balloon!

I gather the key mover behind the cats-dressed-as-people movement was Harry Whittier Frees (1879-1953) – sort of a Louis Wain of early photography. I snatched the quote below from Wikipedia and it come from his own book, Animal Land on the Air, discussing the superiority of kittens as models,

Rabbits are the easiest to photograph in costume, but incapable of taking many ‘human’ parts. Puppies are tractable when rightly understood, but the kitten is the most versatile animal actor, and possesses the greatest variety of appeal. Yay kittens!

The practice spread widely beyond Whittier Frees – as we can assume this card was made by someone else. For a healthy serving of these I suggest this site on littlethings.com. I have stolen a single image from it, shown below by an unidentified photographer.