memoir

Deitch Studio: Christmas 2025

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: Arguably the most popular day on the Pictorama calendar – the holiday card reveal – and here we are again! For the third year now, with Kim’s blessing, I have attempted all seven cats – the Jersey Five and the New York cats combined as the illustration. As has become our pattern, I draw it and he then redraws, traces and inks it. The cats have stayed true to my drawing as has the design. Us in the sleigh is more him and the moon has become a good old Deitchian moon. I think it is a fair melding hybrid of our styles.

Kim noted that the cats look a bit like balloons here – of the Thanksgiving parade kind. Some more than others – Stormy hovering over Christmas is the most balloon like. (She is a pretty dreamy kitty. One of the last of the strays mom acquired.) Evidently a slow moving sleigh now that I reflect on it.

For the record and the curious, the top row from left to right are Blackie, Milty, Gus, Cookie and bottom row, Beau, Peaches and Stormy. Milty is the oldest and Peaches and Stormy roughly tie for youngest and last into the house. Cookie and Blackie are the only ones from the same litter (our New York kits) and Blackie and Beau share their all black cat-ness.

Front door at Thanksgiving.

As I do the card reveal this year I need to apologize a bit – it seems I have lost my address book which I have had since college. Although many addresses have migrated to my electronic book, many of the oldest ones have not and among those I don’t necessarily have emails or numbers to text either. Someone pointed out that the universe was trying to tell me something.

I didn’t see it at first but someone pointed out that Kim has candy cane horns – I must ask him if it was on purpose or if he was having subliminal Grampus urges. Now I don’t know how I missed it.

If you are new to the card reveal, this joint card project goes back to the first year Kim and I started dating (predating Pictorama by decades) and has developed over time. Some earlier examples can be found here, here and here.

As you read this on Sunday morning we will (hopefully) be packed up and on our way to New Jersey with Cookie and Blackie in tow. We spent today (Saturday) organizing and filling boxes and suitcases so the cats are suspicious – sleeping on the bed with one eye slightly open I’d say.

When we get to the house I am anxious to see if my holiday swags of evergreens have lasted on the front railings. I will take out my few holiday decorations – oversized colored lights will go in the fireplace, an elderly Santa made of lead skiing and a few other choice bits that will live on the mantle – one of the few cat free spaces in the house. (That of course is always subject to change if a cat is enterprising enough!)

Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.
Hard to read beyond Mr. and Mrs. Will Claff. How on earth did this get delivered I wonder.

I thought I would bookend this post with another card I bought this fall. Sent on December 23, 1914. It was sent from Brockport, NY but the address is hard to read as is the message. Of course it was the idea of the nifty cat pull toy on the front that did it for me, bow and all. I like the little poem too which says, I send this kissy kat because I cannot go like Santa Claus, to give my Christmas love to you, or kiss you – as I’d like to do. So a Merry Christmas to you all – a few New Year’s cards tucked away next.

On Christmas Day Have Mirth and Laughter

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: We have a cat Christmas card entry of a jolly sort today, something to get us tuned up for Thursday.

Here in Manhattan, after about four inches of snow last week, we were awash in rain yesterday. (We’re talking street flooding – a lot of rain!) Although there is precipitation in the forecast for later this week, I’d gamble a guess that it will be a green Christmas in New Jersey. A few degrees either way though and we’ll see. Pretty as the snow is (see below for some photos of the house last week) I guess I am old enough to see the disadvantages of shoveling (or paying someone to!) and the slippery sidewalks and roads. We do like to take some long walks when we are out there. However, I wouldn’t mind a sprinkling for Christmas though to see if it could put me in the holiday mood a bit which I could use.

Snowy front yard in NJ last week! From a friend’s phone video.

The end of the calendar year is always a very busy time for fundraisers. I believe I have opined on this in the past and since the earliest days of my chosen career, the last weeks of the year have been fraught with either being too busy (at the Met) or not busy enough (my first years at Jazz).

My current gig combines its Top Dog Gala and its fiscal year end at the already very busy calendar year end. It’s pretty boffo. However, now in my second year end there I understand it a bit better and I am hoping for some down time, even while keeping an eye on things at the office. I am also old enough to know that we have a plan we’re executing and what will be will be. It isn’t really the sort of place, like the Met, where someone is going to decide they want to donate a valuable mortgaged piece of property in the last ten days of the year.

Decorating and setting up for Top Dog earlier this month.

Therefore in my adult life there has never really been a holiday season that has been free of work concerns. There was the year I left Jazz right before the end of the year, but that was a year of other losses and the holidays were a bit sad and full of the anxiety of a new job. Sometimes you just do the best you can do over the holidays.

The card at the top of the post sums it up well, Whatever fortune my come after, on Christmas Day have mirth and laughter. Mom and Dad cat (perched on an ottoman) are in an interesting composition of paws and tails. (The adult cats form a really great sort of central square with a paw and a tail leading us in and out!)

Their progeny, in kitten form, giggle and poke each other next to mom on the couch. There’s something about the furniture that makes me think that it is so specific it refers to real furniture somewhere in the artist’s life. It’s a very suburban and somewhat prosperous scene. Whatever their world weary worries are Mom and Dad cat chuckle together.

The artist knew cats. Dad cat is a proper orange marmalade and mom a darker orange and brown mix – producing an orange kit and as well as a black and white tabby. This combination certainly within the possibility of likelihood.

The copyright on the card is actually 1890 by a company called L. Prang and Company of Boston, USA. Below I share (in its entirety) an entry on Louis Prang via the Boston Public Library:

Louis Prang (1824-1909), a German immigrant, ran a highly successful printing firm in Boston during the late nineteenth century. His company produced high quality reproductions of major art work and greeting cards using the complex technique of chromolithography. Prang is often referred to as the ‘Father of the American Christmas Card’ because holiday cards were rarely exchanged in America until his factory began producing them in the 1870s.

A quick look at his other wares in terms of Christmas cards does not show many of this type. He generally seemed to go in more for arty reproductions of flowers and holly. There is a tiny signature for the artwork, EBW. I cannot find tracks on him, perhaps his foray into cat cards was brief – or he eventually expanded his signature.

This card was never sent but in faded pencil on the back, in script, it says, John Peckham.

78th Street on our way to Orwasher’s last Sunday.

So today’s card is a shot over the bow for those of us who are having trouble getting the the holiday spirit. I will spend my day packing us up for our 2-3 week sojourn in New Jersey. And cleaning the apartment – I like to come home to start the New Year in a reasonably clean apartment.

Tomorrow is the 2025 Deitch Studio card reveal. For ongoing readers, you knew it was coming! For now however, try to insert a bit of ho, ho, ho into your proceedings and if not, at least for the day later this week!

What’s Up

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: A flurry of purchases for holiday gifts is commencing and, although there may be one or two readers from the animal hospital who check in over here, I’m pretty sure I am safe posting this particular one in advance of giving it. My work gifts are largely of the canine kind – I must admit that my office is far heavier in pup than kit and therefore dogs are having their day once again here at Pictorama.

Those who have followed me in the years since I left Jazz for the animal hospital know that, especially for a devoted cat person, I now spend a lot of time with dogs. (In fact our annual Top Dog Gala where we celebrate a dog, class of dogs and/or supporter of the hospital’s non-profit mission, is Tuesday. A post about my first Top Dog can be found here. As these events go, dogs do make it a lot more fun!)

An early fall update was doggie indeed and I shared photos of our Paws & Pints event and perhaps our canine concert. (That can be found here.) Puppies and working Guide Dogs populated a Woof & Wine for the younger set interested in our work. So this cat woman is doing a lot of belly rubs and good boys with a whole new crowd. Seven cats means it is unlikely that there is a dog in our immediate future at Deitch Studio, but then again, you never know.

My first Top Dog back in December of ’23.

Meanwhile, as the holidays approach I have applied my same searching rules and know how to finding something to fit and personal to each of those recipients. (Last year I luckily stumbled on a number of small vintage prints of various kinds which made up about half the group.) In my shopping and searching I set a fairly low ceiling on the cost so it took a while for price and aesthetics to come together.

Really, I got lucky pretty fast and this card, mailed back in March of 1908, was one I could just purchase. (Another is on its way to me for a colleague who just got a puppy – his first pet in a number of years. He is a musician and almost got early canine related sheet music but the card I found for him looks like an early 20th century version of his pup!)

In this process I should admit that one photo has come to stay (an occupational hazard – more on that one in a future post) and I thought this one rated the Pictorama treatment. In this card a big footed fellow appears here in straw boater and spiffy collar better suited for a summer outing for the 4th of July than Christmas. A quick search tells me that this image was first distributed in 1906. The ultimate recipient of this card has smaller dogs but I think will like this early guy’s style.

Although it is postmarked March 5, 1906 I cannot read the location of the cancellation. It was sent to Miss Marion Deverance in Durant Okla Box 598 without a message; I guess they felt the card spoke for itself? It’s a simple image in black and white, really just depending on the props for the pup and also the sweet and somewhat urgent look in his eyes. This little fellow wants to please the person behind the camera – perhaps one holding a treat?

I amaze a bit at the difference between dogs and cats as I spend time with them these days. It’s pretty universal that cats hate going to the vet and the best you can hope for is one that doesn’t howl, or in the extreme, bite. Dogs are a mixed bag. Some seem (not all to be sure) to honestly be happy to enter our doors and see their doctor friends. Others are at least resigned as long as they are with mom or dad. There are some who, like the felines, just aren’t having it.

In general though, dogs are so much more social and enjoy participation in the world with their people in a way cats just cannot. I have had some success planning dog friendly events over these past two years. Finding establishments that can and will welcome dogs has been one of the interesting challenges. Our annual Living Legends luncheon typically honors a dog, cat and exotic animal setting the bar for that location even higher. (Bearded dragon welcome?) Meanwhile, we have a parrot joining its mom at our Gala next week, a moveable perch needed to be found for it so that it could join in some photo sessions. Again, this is a very different job! (For your information and in case you need one, Amazon had the perch.)

There are a smattering of dog friendly bars and restaurants uptown near me. Interesting to note that NYC parks are not especially friendly to dog gatherings, although the individual conservancies are willing the Parks Department gives us a thumbs down. I worked for Central Park for several years and am well aware of their leash laws but these have not been requests to have dogs off leash, just gatherings where people could bring them.

My hardbound copy of this book. I bought a bunch of paperbacks to give as thank you gifts this year at work.

Obviously fund raising for an animal hospital raises specific and different challenges from my years at Jazz and before that decades at the Metropolitan Museum. In some ways I am uniquely prepared with my deeply devoted pet past and present. And it’s not all about dogs – donors to a new cat fund for needed emergency surgeries has received May Sarton’s book, The Fur Person which I wrote about in a post that can be found here.

I hope my colleagues will like their canine cards and other holiday treats and that next year, my third, further indicates that I am getting the hang of this fundraising for animals thing right.

Kicking Off the Holidays: Fleureux Noel

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: Evidently the literal (Google) translation of the flourish at the top is Christmas Flower but I am thinking it is perhaps more like Christmas Tree because that is what this kit is bringing home or delivering today.

This card is a nod in honor of those of you who get that tree and put it up right after Thanksgiving – which was at one time the holiday tradition in the Butler family home. After a few years it was a fake tree (mom developed a distaste for killing a tree for the holidays) and I always missed the smell of a real one. Luckily here in Manhattan I get to walk past them on the street and enjoy! I don’t do a tree in New Jersey – it would just be a giant, expensive, messy cat toy. However, I have employed a wreath and some swags on the railings of the front door in there and it has a lovely smell each time you walk in. (I also discovered that this do-it-yourself outdoor decor thing is harder than it looks!)

The front door, most of the way done for the holidays…it was a several day process.

On this cat card snow is falling on this already amply covered mountain scene. (I’m a sucker for snow in pictures, just ask Kim – I always ask to put it in the Christmas card! It is a lovely decorative element.) The tree isn’t especially well secured – snow covered, it is in fact a bit precarious in its (large) pot on the back of this wooden sled – and sports a few decorations, a gift box, some lights even if you look carefully.

Our kitty driver is a bit oblivious – he’s knocked this other unfortunate fellow aside. He does sport a nifty little tie around his neck, sled “reins” in his paws and snow shoes on his lower extremities – which I guess makes sense if you are an anthropomorphic puss. He has a fluffy tail but his fur otherwise suffices to keep him (and the others) warm in the snow. No hat, Mr. Cat?

The small cat which has been casually bowled over onto his bottom by this sled notwithstanding (I think of this as a bit of a ham-handed tip of the hat to Louis Wain myself), Mr. Driver Cat keeps his eyes on the path. There are two cats watching him go by – well, one is and the other is looking off elsewhere. The snow covered mountain peaks are in the distance and high above the scene. I am not exactly sure what the artist has sketched in behind the mountains and below the clouds – there are lines which might be water? Hard to say.

It has to be said that the sender had little respect for the card (or was it the postal service requirement?) and plunked a stamp on the front. As a result I can’t read the cancellation with place and date. It also almost covers the already difficult to read name of the card maker. I think it is Favorite, maybe a company name; it is pretty illegible. (There is also a sort of silver-izing or oxidizing of this card which makes it extra shiny in spots in the light and which make it harder to read.) I quick look at my own archive and I come up with Maurice Boulanger as the likely artist. (That was a New Year’s card back in 2019 which can be found here – ironically I opined that I would like to travel less for work in the coming year. Little did any of us know what March of 2020 would bring!) I have had other Boulanger cards in color recently – you can read one of those here.

Let me know if I have missed something in my rough translation!

This card was sent by someone named Louis and he has nicely dated the card as December 23, 1912. It is addressed to Monsieur et Madame Richard at what appears to be: S Rue Caron Malakof, Seine. (He has written over Malakof and I have checked the spelling online.) I don’t read French and the (very) rough translation appears to be something along the lines of: Dear Charles, I’m sorry, I had to go, I’ll woke up the [?}, he had been warned, but I’ll skip Christmas if that doesn’t bother you, I’ll be at your place around the 7th, say hello to everyone. Louis If I am missing something vital I ask you French readers to share!

Back in the early part of the 20th century the French did extremely well with holiday cards – New Year’s cards being their forte – which I continue to enjoy today. In fact, Pictorama may have one of those lurking in the pile for this year. I assure you all that some gems are hiding in this pile still!

Poor Fish!

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: This is among the last of my British purchases made on a whim before the Trump tax kicked in and made all my purchases from England (a favored source) more expensive. Postage had already started to get out of control and the extra bit is a combined big bite. That’s not to say I won’t buy from my beloved dealers there, but it is slowing me down, especially on the sorts of thing I buy sort of without thinking much.

Nonetheless, this wandered in a door a while back from the very lovely Stephen Phillips (http://@woodenhilltoys) via Instagram. His videos of the tables sporting his wares at shows all over Britain tend to make me salivate for an alternate life where I live there and drive around following him and others to these various wonderful shows – I guess I additionally live in a wonderful little cottage which is crammed full of all of the stuff I collect. (As opposed to this very small apartment and the less romantic but now much beloved Cape Cod alternate home base in New Jersey.)

The precise question of what exactly this is remains open. It is adhered to a sheet of linen type fabric and there were other bits also attached around it which I have kept but are of no particular interest. Under magnification it appears to be printed. I had some folds which the framer has done a pretty good job of pressing out.

Hard for me to imagine Mr. Blackie as a murderer of anything.
The girls get my vote – I think Cookie is most likely to enjoy a good waterbug now and again.

Here we have one of my beloved black kits (think Beauregard and Blackie), out in the wilds of somewhere having caught himself a fine meal. The fish is very large in relationship to the cat, it must be said. That fish would have given that cat a run for his money. I would say just this side of not possible.

Playing off the violence of the feline hunter is the pleasant greenery and flowers around him. Pansies and other flowers bloom and trees, green hills and a pleasant cloud filled sky are juxtaposed against this violence against this large carp-type fish.

Mugshot of Beau – unlikely but not impossible mouse killer.

However, whoever painted the cat caught the weird combination of feral and fluffy. This is a domestic round, cute and fluffy fellow (or girl as they are the big hunters) for what we can see, yet there is something in the eyes which reminds us cats are indeed instinctual killers and happy consumers of small game. There is also something in his or her look which is the cute kitten look, hoping for approval. Here in our apartment cat catching (fortunately) never seems to rise above large water bugs and the rare mouse in the house in New Jersey.

Hobo back in 2023. We know he could do the deed.

Having said that Hobo, our outdoor denizen in New Jersey for several years, was once found adding to his protein consumption by munching on a newly caught rat – a robust population of those in the yard there given our proximity to the water. The caretaker, Winsome, reported this as well as the more recent mouse body in the living room. Very icky! Without knowing for sure I attribute that catch to our feral female Peaches who stubbornly refuses to even be touched by human hands, but who survived as a lost kitten in a basement in a nearby town until she fell down a hole and someone heard her persistent meowing. There are five cats in that house but my money is on Peaches. I have done my best to stuff up any entry points with steel wool. I have to say that it is a pitifully dumb rodent that wanders in there.

Peaches is the most likely to kill a rodent in my opinion.

Although I did tell Winsome I thought we had to congratulate Peaches on a job well done – not like I want to encounter mice in my house dead or alive – it is not generally the favorite aspect for most of us domestic cat owners. Of course working cats live in bodegas and in barns with the expectation that both their very presence as well as their hunting prowess will be employed as a deterrent. This newly framed picture will travel to New Jersey where it will serve as a reminder of the other side of the nature of our sweet kits.

As I end this I feel compelled to add that in the time I was working on it I had a message from Steve and sure enough, he has a few cat prints for me. Guess I am not out of it at all yet!

Family

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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.

Gusty

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: I plucked this one out of the Pictorama library (aka pile on my desk) today as it is quickly turning wintery and windy here in New York City. I itch to say it is premature, however late November is technically more than fair game. We saw some snow the other day – for about 20 minutes it was snow globe shaken glory out the window. It ended and turned sunny by the time Kim and I exited for our morning walk – he walks me part of the way to my office most days, a new practice I find very enjoyable.

I have not yet fetched the down jackets from their basement lair. Instead I have been layering bits and pieces on and topping with a big scarf. (I displayed said scarf – and gloves! – in my cat clothing mania post last week which you can find here if you missed it.) I am heading to the west side to a dinner party tonight so I think I have put it off long enough and I need to spring it today and let them commence their winter service.

I have purchased a warm black wool hat which I have worn and already lost and found and lost again. I think I need to purchase my hats in brighter colors perhaps, making them harder to loose. Anyway, I believe it to still be in this very small apartment so it should turn up. I am eyeing my boots much earlier in the year than usual, more for warmth than for wet.

A recent attempt to provide the cats with a heated bed has been somewhat unsuccessful. Blackie prefers my spot on the bed (preferably slipping into it while still warm from me in the morning). Cookie will sleep in the bed – however with the heat off and a towel lining it so it doesn’t smell like whatever it smells like which they have indicated stinks and will not do.

Blackie this very morning, having hopped into my spot immediately upon my vacating it. In fact, truth is he sat on top of me, willing me to get up!

Meanwhile, today’s card is a Maurice Boulanger design, A Gusty corner in Catland. It was sent on March 25, 1904 from Newcastle-on-Tyne to Miss L. Poppleton, 19 Henry Street, Sheildfield. So I think it was a card appropriate to the weather there and then. The note on the back simply says, Dear Lizzie, Do not come tonight as I have to go straight home. come in on Wednesday if possible. Nellie XXXXX. Amazing to think of a time when there were enough mail deliveries in a day that you could send such a note with the expectation it would get there in time! It was the text of its day.

I have written about Boulanger before (prior posts can be found here and here) as he along with Manzer (a choice example here) were the worshippers at the Wain alter. In reality Boulanger was a contemporary of Wain and definitely working the same side of the street with his jolly anthropomorphic kits, perhaps a bit less maniacal than Louis Wain’s. (As I say that I realize that I have some pretty whacky examples coming up for future posts however. He can get his crazy on too.) Alongside Wain he rose to prominence in the early aughts of the 20th century.

This card utilizes just black and white (and therefore gray) in the printing. Kim and I were just talking the other day about how it wasn’t that long ago that any color, let alone full color, printing was substantially more expensive. (I always have to remind myself when printing things at work that this is no really longer true.) So it was a clever design for a slightly less expensive line of cards is my thought.

Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.

Above is another Boulanger from my collection utilizing only black and white. The post for this New Year’s greeting can be read here. Perhaps the same park scene but in full blown, snowy winter? No human sartorial splendor for these felines – they are just in their fur (hope it is warm enough) and only one bow between the three for decorative effect.

This quartet of kitties was out for a stroll in some sartorial splendor when the wind whipped up tossing hats and skirts astray! A monocle goes flying and we are moments from an accident as this puss also chases his hat while stepping carelessly off a curb. The gentlemen cats in question both sport top hats and while the little girl’s is well secured, moma kitty fears that her chapeau will take flight as well. Interesting that the two men cats have bushy and evident tails (Blackie just puffed his up this morning when a pile of papers fell under Kim’s desk – quite a look!) and the girls here keep their under their ample frocks.

The scene reminds me of Central Park but we will suppose a park in France or Britain was the likely origin. (The card was printed in Austria but the copyright language all in English so I am thinking a British product.)

The word on the street is that it is a cold and snowy winter ahead here in the Northeast of the United States. I have a stock of wintery cards ahead so I guess I say let it snow!

I Was Much Surprised

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: Every day that is a Louis Wain day is a good one here at Pictorama! I have had the pleasure of adding many Wain posts to the collection here at Pictorama, including a review of the recent book. (Some of those other posts can be perused here, here and here for additional Sunday leisure reading.)

Like my post a few weeks ago, this is another example where the sender has (consciously or unconsciously) enhanced the card with their message. Somehow when I saw it I just laughed at those words in script under the cat – thinking that he was much surprised by the basket of kittens! Surprise Pops!

Instead the brief missive written on the card is from a grandma to a sick child – chicken pox I suspect. I believe it reads, I was much surprised to hear of your spotty face. I hope its back soon be better & no marks left, don’t scratch it. Your loving Gramms. (The woman didn’t believe in periods for the most part so I have added them.) It was mailed from Paddington at 5:30 PM on May 5 of 1905. It was sent to Master C. T. Travers, Woolfanger (?), Markingham, Surrey.

The card was produced by the Raphael Tuck & Sons Company and declares in tiny print that it is a part of their Write Away postcard series. It also proclaims that it was designed in England and chromographed in Bavaria. I have only started to focus on the Raphael Tuck cards as sort of the sweet spot for Wain. (They also produced a rather fascinating set of Felix holiday cards. I have a few in my collection and find them almost impossible to turn down at auction – although they go very pricey. One is below and the post for it can be found here.)

Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.

Finally onto Mr. Wain himself. Grumpy Papa cat drops his pipe at Momma cat coming from behind the door with a basket load of kittens. Is it the first time she is presenting and surprising him with the kits? Was he, like any traditional papa, pacing and waiting pipe in hand (paw) to hear the baby news? Regardless, it is a bit of a sour puss he presents.

He happens to be tabby-spotty (additionally accurate for this card), he stand on hind legs, tail down. Ears are back in a cat look of annoyance which Wain has morphed with a human expression. Mom cat just looks tired and the five kittens (that we can see) are a mix of tabby, marmalade like Mom a white and two grays – ready to hop out of the basket and start causing chaos. Adult cats stand on a carpet of a sort of wild print with this bit of door between them. As always, Wain manages to express much with a brief, somewhat sardonic vignette.

My family only won the kitten lottery once which if Mom was here she would agree was more than enough. Our female tortie, Winkie, escaped out one morning while in heat, teaching us forever to get kits spade as quickly as humanly possible. Her paramour appeared to be a tabby we’d never seen before. And surprise she ultimately produced a gray tabby, a marmalade one, and two grays – so not unlike this bushel.

Honestly Winkie had little use for them after a few weeks of being very possessive. We kept them all (Tigger, Squash, Ping and Pong) and our feline family burgeoned at that point for a long period of time. I think it brought us to seven. The cats were still free range outside in those days so it was a bit less evident than the Jersey Five (plus visits from Cookie and Blackie) are in the (small) house today. Ultimately Winks started to pretend she had no idea where these interlopers had come from and would growl at them or at best ignore them.

Arguably Wain is pretty much at the height of his popularity and success when this card was produced. It is nice to think of Grandma, long ago, going to the shop and picking it out especially for Master Travers who was suffering a bit from this childhood ailment. My guess is that it cheered him immensely.

Hat’s Off

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: As I wake up on this pretty fall morning, the folks over here at WordPress told me that some of you are hard at work reading away. It is fun to see and thank you all as always for your dedicated reading and attention. It’s nice to know that you are out there and I hope you are enjoying your wander around the Pictorama world. Welcome today to all readers both new and longstanding. It pleases me to think that there are folks who want to read about cats, toys and my minor exploits.

I have an interesting little addition for this post, a postcard from the big buy a few weeks back, of a cat having chewed through a hat. Seems like an odd image to make a postcard of – have to wonder if the artist had a real incident on his mind. The cat is rather pleasantly benign for a chapeau eating demon. He is of the, aren’t I cute so you can’t possibly kill me school I guess. Why would he chew through a hat though? Must have been so pleasantly stinky.

This card appears to have been produced in Eastern Europe – ambitious felines there I guess. It is an embossed image, a very old, worn man’s hat with this sweet faced, long haired kit having munched through it. This card was mailed from Fort Scott, Kansas at 11 AM, on March 21, 1908.

Back of the card. Is actually a bit easier to read in this photo than in person.

The pencil writing on the back is very faded and a bit illiterate. The best I can make out is, 3-20-1908 avrr – all ok and a card from Pec. he did not say when he was coming back expect we wont come til Monday if you children are all well. love to all Mother. And it was addressed simply to: Carles J. Pierce, Appleton City Mo. Must have been a small town.

Ongoing readers know that my current gig at an animal hospital has set me contemplating things that pets ingest that they should not. (Foreign Object Friday anyone?) The favorite by far seems to be dogs eating ear buds (owner might even find out because they are gently pinging in the pooch), one of the worse is marijuana they pick up from discarded roaches on the street (very bad for animals, please dispose of thoughtfully), and while it is hard to choose most exotic might go to a corn cob which sort of startled me. Shoes, underwear and socks are not safe from your large pup, I’m telling you that right now.

Just for kicks and giggles – this photo from one of my very first posts. Someone named Dally Petit shown in true cat hat splendor.

However on the cat side, this image reminded me very much of a cat we had as a child, Zipper. I have told of his exploits as the swaggering sort of tabby cock-of-the-walk, feline ringleader in our old neighborhood.

I was quite small when for whatever reason one day Mom had to take Zips to the vet. Evidently she was short of a cat carrier and she enlisted me as well. (Later in life she always made sure she had more than enough to move all the cats if necessary, which it was during hurricane Sandy when she moved at least five.) On this occasion she placed Zipper in a rather picturesque antique straw picnic basket and somehow secured the top so he couldn’t bound out.

Zipper was not a cat easily cowed and he sent what we called war whoops and howls from the seat next to her in front (this was an old car and I believe the front seat was all one, not broken into separate seats like they are now), and I was plopped in the back, but of course watching this unfold. Well, Zipper was not to be contained and began systematically eating his way through the side of the basket. (In retrospect, whatever ailed him wasn’t that serious I guess.) It wasn’t long before he was thoroughly stuck, head out but unable to go back in. I can assure you he was a good deal more demonic looking than this puss. Mom, for her part, just kept driving.

I have no idea how we got him home, nor was I there when the vet must have cut him out and most likely asked mom what the heck she was thinking. I wish mom was still around to ask her about that part of the story. This card will always remind me of it however.

Sadly I cannot think of a single family photo that incorporates Zipper – he was a will o’ the wisp of a fellow, always on the move. Somehow he never quite got documented to my knowledge. I suspect it had to do with his aversion to being picked up. A true ally cat, he was very selective about who could touch him and how much. He lives now only in my memory and imagination.

A couple of rather wonderful items wandered in the door this week – a good week at the online auctions. This and that needs to be done before I can share them but some rather wonderful things coming up soon so stay tuned.

Snapshot

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: I am giving Pictorama readers a brief break from postcards today. I feel like it has been a long time since I have posted a snapshot. It isn’t because I don’t look for them, but photos that wander into the Pictorama realm are a bit more rarified it seems. This one was found and quickly purchased on eBay recently as someone was smart and noted that a nice Felix lurks on the window shade.

The picture is undated however her clothing and this nice deckled edge on the print puts me in mind of the early fifties. (I recently saw an early deckle edge photo trimmer online. It appeared to be one for home use. I gather Kodak sold printing paper with the deckle edge for a couple of decades – both things interested me because I always thought it was only evident in commercially processed photos.)

It is a small photo, only two and a half by three and a half inches. This woman sits center stage is all dressed to the nines with a corsage on her shoulder, earrings, stockings and heels. However the setting is more seemingly casual with wooden folding chairs. There are plants on the window and a fence with trees beyond it. A bit more of the outside might be a clue to where she is (at best I just see some leafy treetops) although it is an event or a visit somewhere special clearly.

Of course I purchased it because of the somewhat off-model and presumably homemade Felix on the shade behind her. Felix stands hands (paws?) on hips, elbows out. He’s a very angular Felix, with an oversized head and a smile. His tail appears sort of mid-leg at an odd angle, although for cat-a-tude they seem to have gotten him right.

Felix’s image is surprisingly enduring. Consider that the height of his popularity was in the 1920’s to find folks still painting his image on some blinds somewhere in the world of the 1950’s is sort of an odd and interesting thought. Like his competition Mickey Mouse the grip of his image has held fast for many subsequent decades. Leaves me wondering what has been produced subsequently that will have legs as long, hard to beat the famous cat and mouse.

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As you read this I will be off to New Jersey for a few days of winterizing chores for the house there. My dahlias are still blooming so I won’t be taking them in yet, but the heat filters will be changed and the irrigation system turned off. Pumpkins and mums are already out on the steps but I intend to enjoy my fall garden for a few days. (Tune into Instagram for dahlia update!) See you next week!