Rags the Rotography Cat

On the Fence

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: I have seen this postcard before and I cannot say why but have never thought to purchased it until now. Suddenly it just struck me as good fun when I saw it the other day online, a perfect version of a sort of a card. Perhaps all my kitten photo posts lately had me in a different frame of mind and attuned me to seeing it better.

Meanwhile, it’s an overcast morning here in Manhattan and shortly after I finish this post I need to hurry down to 76th Street and Second Avenue for a street fair where the animal hospital I work for has taken a block for our annual Paw Day. I will layer up with branded t-shirt, sweatshirt, baseball cap and kerchief – we actually give those to dogs who visit but I like to wear one jauntily tied around my neck. I don’t know about sun, but I think maybe we can avoid rain.

Anyway, today’s card shows these two adolescent cats, just out of proper kittenhood in my opinion, sitting on a picket fence distracted perfectly in unison by something we cannot see. Their uniform, spotty fur makes me thing they might be littermates. Utterly illegible, in poorly planned white writing on the white fence it declares these two as, The Astronomers. These are stargazing felines it seems. The background is a solid black so if there are stars in theory, they reside out of view.

Perhaps ironically, or not, the copyright by Rotograph is a more visible white on black, under the leg of the left cat, right where his black tail is curled around his feet or her feet. The copyright is 1906 by the Rotograph Company of New York. (Almost exactly a year ago I did another post about a Rotograph card which can be found here. However, more about the Rotograph Company and Rags their cat, can be found in a post here. Oddly that one is from April of ’19. Spring is Rotograph time here at Pictorama!) It would appear to me, for the record, that the cat on the left is indeed Rags as he has a singular mark coming down from his right eye.)

Pams-Pictorama.com collection.

This card was mailed in the year of its copyright, December 1, 1906. It was sent from and to Worcester, Massachusetts at 4:00 in the afternoon. It was mailed to, Master Topsy & Sweetheart Merrit, 6 High Street, Worcester, Mass. (Out of curiosity I checked and there is a split-level home of relatively recent vintage there now.) I’m sure it was great enjoyed by Topsy and Sweetheart and as a result has somehow lasted in splendid shape all these years.

I pledge for a longer post tomorrow when I am not under the gun to get to work. I will catch you all up on tales (and tails) from Paw Day perhaps.

Rags

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: As I mentioned yesterday, the scanner here at Deitch Studio has made a permanent exit. It didn’t really owe us much as it was acquired in 2007 according to our Amazon records and survived a couple of Deitch publications in their entirety – of course not just the finished products requiring huge files of high resolution scans, but the many stages of sketches, not to mention this blog and the daily demands made of any scanner. It died halfway through a scan of the back cover of Kim’s next book, almost but not quite making that final last gasp. RIP old friend.

Mr. Deitch’s requirements of size and resolution make replacing this piece of equipment a somewhat more complex matter than it would appear – as I understand it, the model we currently have (a direct descendent of the only kind we have ever owned) was designed for things like scanning x-rays than with cartoonists necessarily in mind. The scanner in question is no longer produced (of course!) but as I am in charge of technology here at Deitch Studio I have taken it under advisement and I am researching a replacement.

Meanwhile today, I present a recent acquisition via the photo the seller supplied. Rags, the Famous Rotograph Cat turns out to have been a hard working little fellow. From kittenhood he was dressed up and posed – in tiny men’s suits, baby clothes, a dunce cap and the like, or in juxtaposition with baby chicks, bunnies or other small animals that a cat like Rags was perhaps more interested in snacking on. Looking at this scrappy little tabby fellow, I have to assume that while he would have preferred a life of leisure, however despite certain indignities, his days as a photo model, (hopefully) complete with meals and a warm, dry place to live was preferable to what many of his cohorts could opt into.

From the accounts I can find of the Rotograph Company, it would appear that Rags was a fellow resident of Manhattan. Situated at 684 Broadway from 1904-1911, the Rotograph Company inhabited a handsome building near Fourth Street which, according to Google Earth photos, appears largely intact from that period today. For some reason Kim and I both got Rotograph and Rotography all mixed up with photogravure (a photo intalglio print making process) and instead it appears these folks just made this name up. In fact their line of photo postcards were indeed real photos (as per a tiny printed boast on the back bottom of the card) either produced directly for sale or made as commercial items for others. During their brief existence they coughed out more than 6,000 cards, many which are actively resold today. This particular card was mailed from Niagara Falls, NY on the afternoon of July 30, 1907 and arrived in North Sterling, Ohio on August 1 at 6 AM.

When I reflect on working animals I tend to think that dogs (at least many of them) enjoy having a job. It seems to me that a dog in films is having a glorious time of being put through his or her paces with a master or mistress lurking just behind the camera, rewards in hand. It is the same instinct that makes them herd sheep well. They like to hang out with the humans and be a part of something. It is difficult to imagine cats as anything but more diffident to such a role. However from what I read, evidently with enough of the right cat treats many cats are willing to sing for their supper as well and do so in films and performance venues. The question of if they enjoy it hangs unanswered. While I occasionally remind Cookie and Blackie that they have “jobs” this usually means curling up on the bed with me when I am under the weather or allowing me to pick them up and “kiss their little cat face” – which they hate of course, but it is after all, work.

On Instagram I follow a heavy set tabby with the moniker Larry the Security Cat who is a rescue living in a thriftstore called BLUvintage in Delaware. I only recently realized he has a broken paw which has healed quite crooked and is evidence that he had a rough early life on the street. It would appear that his duties these days are light – largely confined to pets, chin rubs and posing with strangers. He posts frequently and has over 7,200 followers. I found him via a mention in the New York Times. It seems like the right amount of genteel work for this fellow and a good trade-off to end a hard life on the street.

Meanwhile, our friend Rags appears to have gone onto star in his own book, Kittens and Cats in 1911. It is my hope the residuals were enough for him to retire on at that point.

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Cookie, posing in her best Rags imitation yesterday, and on Blackie’s cushion, which she stole.

 

Today a shout out to fellow feline blogger Historical Felines for their post on Rags which helped inform today’s post and can be found in its entirety at Aristocat!