postcard

Everything’s Swell!

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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.

Back Up? Why Yes…

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: This scrappy little feline is issuing a warning – Back up! Cigar in mouth, claw paws and fixed stare, he chomps on a cigar which casts a reddish glow on his face, spewing a plume of smoke. His scratching paws show claws on the ground. He might be old and tatty but he can still fight a good fight. Although I think the admonishment means Get Back I think it also alludes to having your back up.

There is a small squiggle in the lower left corner and while I thought it was a spider or other insect, I now think it is someone’s way of signing their images. Google Images was not able to help me, however I now know that this was actually a woman’s suffrage image which I had not guessed. (I have a few suffragette items, which are frequently about cats, and a post about one is here.) It does make some sense now that I know it. It belongs to a series of cards featuring this tatty tom. This card was never used or mailed.

Votes for Women statue. Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.

Cards like this referred to the changing social role of women and aligning them with cat like characteristics. I look at Cookie and Blackie this morning and I am not quite sure what characteristics they are referring to – I may be missing the point. (Cookie has been pacing the apartment and meowing at us and Blackie is napping on the couch. Neither seems politically idealistic.) I am not so thick however, that I don’t understand that this is a flinty, tough kit who is ready to engage their claws on all comers. Me-ow!

From the same series but not in Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.

I think I chose today’s card because we are mid-summer here in NYC and I am at sixes and sevens. A thoughtful colleague asked what I had enjoyed most about summer so far and my first thought is how hot and wet it has been and I could hardly come up with a pleasant answer. Work has been busy (event in Sag Harbor a week ago) and other than the temperatures and the humidity it has not felt like summer at all. We are generally frayed and on edge here. My fur is standing on end!

Next week sees our month long move to the Jersey shore and some vacation. I am hoping to restore my equilibrium and my spirits with long evenings on the porch among the dahlias and the hummingbirds which come to snack in the evenings. I want to eat my homegrown Jersey tomatoes, local corn and peach ice cream, along with grilling some fish. I want to drink an iced drink and read on the deck with Kim also reading in a chair across from me. (We have a towering pile of books we are bringing!) August is designed to smooth our fur and get us ready for the coming fall ahead.

Tail End

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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.

Atlantic Highlands

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: Today’s postcard, celebrating a local summer spot where I grew up in New Jersey, seems like a fitting Memorial Day holiday kick-off card. I purchased it at the postcard show bonanza of a few months ago with the intention of framing it for the house in NJ where I am gathering a few early cards of local spots I love.

This one was mailed on August 8, 1923 from Atlantic Highlands at 11 AM. It was mailed to Mr. Robert Del Paso, 44 Est 98th Street, New York. Written on the back is a brief note, Best regards to you and your sister from Dorothy and Eugene.

The view shown here is the one that you now see from the ferry when it pulls in. It looks nothing like this now, a small public beach is at the landing and some low condos not far beyond. Boats dock nearby and restaurants and small businesses dot the edge of the water along with some houses, although you don’t see those right in this spot either, as it is largely in the shadow of a much larger bridge.

The approach to Atlantic Highlands via ferry from 2021.

The first time I took the ferry into Atlantic Highlands, the sense memory of that spot was amazing. On the occasions I would go sailing with my dad or on the creaking wooden fishing boat of my grandfather, the Imp, we would head first under one bridge and then the other and to the bay or ocean. The sense of history smacked me hard being on that spot of the water again.

I have touched on this Jersey shore enclave before, not long ago in a post about Bahr’s Restaurant which can be found here. I opined on the thoughts I had about living there at one time, and the history of that restaurant where I had what turned out to be a last birthday dinner with my sister, a few decades past now.

Atlantic Highlands, and it’s kissin’ cousin Highlands, abut the area of the shore I grew up in. (Highlands is the hamlet slightly further into the river side, Atlantic Highlands faces out toward the ocean and beyond.) However, while Sea Bright, a spit of land that adjoins it, was an almost daily destination, the Highlands while hard by, somehow were the route less taken. I believe that this was probably largely due to beach traffic and while being almost within shouting distance as the crow flies it was rarely the shortest way to go anywhere from Memorial Day through Labor Day.

The parking lot for the ferry, next to the small public beach and some condos.

Once I hit high school we made it part of our route when traffic died down late in the evening. We ate lobster rolls and drank beer at shacks at the edge of the river at the junction where the bay joins the river and the ocean. Also on our route was a movie theater that showed films recently fallen out of circulation for an admission of $1.00. Beyond that, expensive restaurants that hugged the shore and gave a view as far as Manhattan on a clear day and those were beyond our means.

Atlantic Highlands, as shown in this postcard, attaches to Sandy Hook beach (and now state park) via the bay. Not only has this quaint wooden bridge been replaced, but the concrete one of my childhood (which seemed plenty big at the time, bigger than its Sea Bright counterpart which required a draw bridge function for the passing parade of boats) was replaced very recently by a true behemoth of a bridge.

Moby’s lobster shack on the water.

The one in Sea Bright is also under reconstruction and I gather will no longer be the draw bridge of my childhood – it’s opening hourly in the summer was how we timed our days in the summer in order to avoid it and the traffic back-up it would cause. I had a boyfriend in high school who had a summer job working the bridge which was a great gig and the retirement job of numerous fishermen. I don’t know how, in retrospect, Ed got that job but many envied him it. I am sorry to say I never visited the tiny shack mid-bridge that was the man cave you stayed in if you worked the bridge.

The theater is evidently still there.

I’m also sorry to have to say that one of the people I spent the most hours with in Atlantic Highlands is gone now. A long former boyfriend, I had fallen out of touch with Sam Lutz, and found out via local connections that he died a few years ago.

I suspect I will eventually return to writing about this area. For some reason it lives in my memory in a way other places do not. However, for now, this rosy sun setting over the Highlands hills is a good place to leave Pictorama for the holiday weekend as I head out there shortly.

He Loves Me!

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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.

Just Like Us!

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: Today is further evidence of last week’s bounty – still just the tip of the iceberg as well. I just showed Kim this card again and his reaction was, I almost like it. Ha! Well, I can see it might not be for everyone, but I do like this one and it makes me laugh.

The art is attributable to postcard artist and contemporary of Wain, Maurice Boulanger. Unlike Wain, Boulanger has not left many auto bio tracks and my nosy friend AI on the Google search doesn’t have much to say, nor has Wikipedia lent a helpful hand. He was very prolific at the dawn of the 20th century and is mostly identified with his often (but not always – he had a sappier more bucolic side) sharply satiric cat postcard images.

Someone has noted Boulanger on the back of this card in pencil; it is otherwise not identified on the card and unlike Wain he did not much seem to sign his work. Perhaps he just did not enjoy that privilege. I gather he did some rather pointed politically satiric cards involving animals as well but is less well known for those.

Boulanger, as evidenced by this card, is a bit less charmingly whacky, boffo and nuanced than Wain; he’s a bit of a one note wonder. His cat wears a nifty straw boater but he has a single thought and it is to pop that ducky into his smiling toothy maw. The duck, not surprisingly absent of humanoid characteristics is played as straight man soon to be snack.

Boulanger has made this cat arm a bit extra long and the hat is also a bit big to account, I guess, for ear coverage on one side. (The hat appears behind the visible ear in a way which I guess has a certain logic.) This leering fellow only has ducky murder and mayhem as a tasty toothsome morsel on his feline brain though and his open-wide cat grin does not convince the viewer otherwise.

Back view of this card.

This is a card which for me benefits from the sender’s addition, Just like us! followed by a slightly illegible signature, Dina or Diana and a surname I cannot read. Just like us! I do wonder what that means – I am not sure I would like to be identified with either of the players in this drama. Gosh – I say what does that mean?

It was sent to Jane Highgate Westerton Villa Shattleston – Glasgow Schottland. There is another word, in German I believe, up at the top I cannot read or translate. I show the back below for any German readers who can help. It was sent on 8.12.04 911 N which to my way of thinking was December of 1911 but maybe someone else can figure that better and let us know. It appears to have been sent from Zehlendorf (outside Berlin) and also it says Wainseebahn.

There is at least one more Boulanger card in this pile, one that runs more to the saccharine than this one. Aside from a New Year’s card which I used to hail the impending arrival of 2020, I think these are the first to join the Pictorama archive. (That New Year’s post can be found here.) More to come on him and his cats it seems – not at all surprising that you’ll find him turning up here at Pictorama.

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.

Spike

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: This card wandered into the house last night, in a pile of interesting mail, especially robust as we hadn’t picked up our mail in a few days – more on that in a bit. It was nestled against a wonderfully long, newsy letter from our friends Pete (Poplaski) and Rika in France. Kim read the letter aloud to me while killing time before picking up take out. A delightful distraction, but resulting in my just having a good look at the card now.

I have a weakness for photos of men with cats (see early posts here and here) and a dog seems like a bonus round. Since Spike is the only name in evidence I will speculate that it belongs to the dog or the man? Neither disinterested kit looks like a Spike. This is a photo postcard and nothing is written on the back. The card was never mailed.

From a very early Pictorama post, Men and Cats. Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.

If we look closely this chap is posing on the flat roof of a house, the eve of the house next door confirming this speculation. (The house in Jersey has such a flat roof out the bathroom window, but no plans for us to climb out onto it in the foreseeable future. Given the roof issues I’ve had with that part of the house I would say likely never.) This is evidently an old house with tatty, long and worn wooden shudders that look like they have done real window protecting work, hence their dilapidation. A bit of a decorative railing appears to one side of that and I wonder if the actual balcony was in theory limited to that area.

Our human is sporting a suit and tie, hat perched atop his head, and a big grin. He is sitting on a chair of which there is very little evidence – I thought at first he was squatting in order to get everyone into the frame at first. The cats, a lovely little tuxie and a somewhat spotty white one, are obediently perched on each leg.

Bonus video of Blackie considering a water “fountain” a friend sent him as he demands bathroom sink water constantly. While entertained by it not sure he actually “gets” it yet.

The dog, who wears a hefty collar, is at his feet and has a somewhat concerned look if we peer closely. The trees behind him and into the distance have leaves but seem vaguely half-hearted, perhaps it is fall and their denuding has begun. A very careful look at the horizon reveals a few other rooftops and more beyond, but that and the sky are completely burned out.

Evidence of our battle with the Afrin bottle. Bloody but now bowed.

Zipping back to life here in New York City. Those of you who follow me on Instagram may have already seen allusions to Covid having come to visit Deitch Studio. Shown above is the evidence of Kim and I going to war with a bottle of Afrin whose childproof cap proved to be largely human proof. We ultimately scored a victory over it, but it cost Kim a bad cut on his drawing thumb and a less significant one on my wrist. (My thanks to him for his sacrifice to help clear my head!)

Kim, who was felled first, seems to have reached the shores on the other side of well while I am getting there, slowly. Cats are very spoiled, with a lot of me petting and treat time – all discipline with them out the window in my malaise. All this to say, there are some great toys waiting to make their debut, a belated birthday to ultimately celebrate. Hopefully I can tackle some of these with renewed tomorrow.

Pathways

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: Pausing some wonderful birthday related acquisitions to show you this pair of cards I bought recently on Instagram from one of my favorite sellers @baileighfaucz.h. (She has a great eye and routinely offers wonderful pics – if money was no issue I’d be buying constantly.) This is a bit of an odd, one off post so apologies for taking this tributary today, away from my more traditional toy and feline exploits.

It isn’t unheard of, but a bit unusual for me as photo purchases go these days, although I always say it is about following your nose. Clearly no cats here, but these immediately caught my eye. They were not technically sold together but clearly, as is sometimes the case, just belong together.

Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.

If anything, these look a bit like photos I might have taken as I was deeply interested in landscape photos for a long time, generally taken with a variety of early cameras and processes. I would like to go back to it some day and now that I have the space in New Jersey I may convert a bathroom into a darkroom. Renting adequate space here in the greater Manhattan area just became too dear.

Timeless landscapes like these have a very calming effect on me – as did the hiking and outdoor time that it took to take them. I like my landscapes with no sign of modern life or human intervention – completely timeless. There is an odd calming response when I look at them.

Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.

It doesn’t take me to say that the photographer had a great eye. The one with the few puffy clouds and no fence is the one I spotted first. It is the more bleak of the two – there’s something about the other one which is more optimistic, hopeful. It is a better tended bit of land and the hand of humans is more evident. In that one there’s something about where the fence and path converge, with the trees visually just touching. I like the way the fence posts fade out into the distance too. It takes you with it.

However, the wilder one if you will, of the two is where the imagination roams a bit. A bit bleak yes, but also promising possibility and the potential for wonder around that bend. Together they make such a visually pleasing combination – I probably can’t really recreate it here but have tried my best.

I am somewhat curious that these are photo postcards. They are beautiful photos, but somehow don’t seem to fit that bill. (It seems unfortunate to think of them marred in the mail and not surprisingly, they were not ever mailed. They are fairly pristine if a tad darkened with age.

Although there is not much room on the walls here in at Deitch Studio I would like to frame them, together and put them at eye level somewhere so I can gaze at them once in awhile and take myself to wherever and whatever time that was.

Luck and Prosperity

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: Although some would certainly argue that Deitch Studio’s decor is Halloween each and every day of the year, in reality we don’t really do holiday decorations here. When I was younger I made room for a small artificial Christmas tree (a future post about my mother and her feelings about real trees) and an oversized light up Santa. As cats do, ours at the time liked it very much, pretending they were in a forest fairyland, and I did too. However, the one room that makes up the apartment has grown, well, smaller and smaller over time. Logistically, figuring out a spot where we could negotiate around it became impossible.

Halloween on the other hand was tempting and the door to the apartment beckoned at first. Living in a high rise building at least has the advantage of a safe indoor public space for display. You do soon learn that to decorate your door implies bounties of candy within and Kim and I realized we weren’t really ready for the rapacious distribution center that a building like ours becomes on Halloween. It also occurs early enough that I am generally still at the office and would fall entirely on Kim.

As for New Jersey, for now, my itinerant lifestyle means I decorate broadly for the season. I planted mums in the front yard and bought some pumpkins – a few “ugly” and one regular. These will give way after Thanksgiving to a wreath, maybe some greens on the railings.

Eventually I hope to go all out for the holidays there and give way to some vintage German decorations for Halloween, perhaps a tasteful black cat or two outside, since it is the House of Seven Cats. Christmas too! I’d love a little tree and I am shopping for the right vintage Santa for the living room. I am sad that my grandmother’s decorations disappeared to the four winds, and occasionally I look for their type on eBay – a certain china Santa, a kind of creche.

All that being said, there isn’t as much festive Halloween decorating here as you might think. However, this card just surfaced on my desk (think of my desk as being like an ocean of stuff where things disappear and are randomly thrown back up for discovery periodically), and sadly I am not sure who thoughtfully sent it to me and Kim. It is a reproduction of a very fine card indeed and even as a reproduction it is fairly old. Thank you!

The poem is hard to read but it says:

A very rare sight on Halloween night
Is a black cat prowling by candle light
If it should be your luck to see –
Long life is yours – prosperity.

Oddly it would appear that this flame, which contains the cat and the clever standing mouse or really rat given his size, is almost like a carrot or turnip, or more likely pumpkin reference – if you consider the green bits growing from the bottom. Maybe a squash as a pumpkin sort of tribute? The greens and jack-o-lanterns are very cheerful and decorative which makes you forget the squash-ness/pumpkin-ness.

The cat rides the witchy broom and the rat rides the cat! This nice black kitty sports a ruff around his or her neck and holds a candle, while this wizard-y rat sits on his haunches with this pointed hat atop his head. Wouldn’t I just love to see that sight on a Halloween night! I mean, who wouldn’t?

As things stand now I will be in Manhattan for Halloween and although I expect to see a lot of dogs in costume (an occupational treat), rats certainly abound here and I even have a black cat (or two, although Beau is in Jersey) so it isn’t quite impossible, now is it?