bow wow WOW!

Oh boy! Today I'm going to send you to Dog Art Today. Yet another fine, fine blog I didn't know about till just now, they have done marvellous work keeping their paw on the pulse of the dog in contemporary art. Plus anyone who can do a decent shout out for the preservation of Frank Lloyd Wright's Ennis House is A-OK by me. Ah yummy, I do so love FLW's textile block houses - like Hollyhock House -- don't you?

18th - 19th century cat haiku

The Japanese poet Issa (1763-1827) had a life with a deal of struggle and sadness; his mother died young, his stepmother drove him from home, his wife and children died before him. This may explain the tenderness with which he constructed haiku such as:

on the cat's grave

in First Month

...dried sardines

and

wild cat--

after making love

he's the town pet

Haiku Guy has a terrific archive on Issa; just use the search box for "cat". Try "kitten".

ten kittens

ten different

colors

giardino cats

Garden cats, in other words, and I mean the Boboli Gardens in Florence. What better to think about on a chilly, soggy morning than the sunny green lawns and rose terraces of Florence in the summer and fall? (I recommend September for a visit.) These gardens, created for Cosimo I de Medici's wife Eleonora of Toledo, are over 450 years old. When you are there you can feel the tender interweavings between the new things that grow and change, and the sheer time of the garden's existence. Who knows what plans were made and vows spoken there?

The garden cats might. A large collection of feral cats live there, fed by the kindness of various folks. The cats are an attraction in themselves; I've taken a fair amount of pictures of them over my 4 trips, but haven't got them handy to post.

But if you go to flickr and search "cat boboli", you find others who do.

swiss rabbit museum!

Yeah! Their website isn't much right now, and it's exclusively in German. Still, isn't it cool to know that should you get to Switzerland, hordes of fine Swiss bunny objects await you? (I jest a bit there. I don't know if they are all of Swiss origin. Also, I'm pretty sure that some products of that nation must be crap, chocolate, watches and banking notwithstanding.)


This tourism page assures you there are no stuffed rabbits, by which I suppose they mean taxidermy mounts. Here's the main page of the Hasenmuseum. "Hase" = German for "rabbit." Click on the "Fotos" button for a few pix.


Bonus I found elsewhere: a German toy-bunny blog. He's cute, he drinks wine, he's thrillingly foreign.

more cowper kitten

The attributions on the last one are not visible, I see. That was from from The Works of William Cowper: His Life, Letters, and Poems (R. Carter & Brothers, 1851). William Cowper (British, 1731-1800) was a popular poet who wrote of everyday life in his time. It's pronounced "cooper", incidentally.

And now from August 1782 Cowper brings us snake vs. kittens (happy ending unless, spoiler, you are a snake):

The Colubriad

Close by the threshold of a door nail'd fast

Three kittens sat: each kitten look'd aghast.

I, passing swift and inattentive by,
At the three kittens cast a careless eye;

Not much concern'd to know what they did there,

Not deeming kittens worth a poet's care.

But presently a loud and furious hiss

Caused me to stop, and to exclaim—what's this?

When lo! upon the threshold met my view,

With head erect, and eyes of fiery hue,

A viper, long as Count de Grasse's queue.

Want the rest? Read it here.

william cowper on his kitten

I have a kitten the drollest of all creatures that ever wore a cat's skin. Her
gambols are not to be described, and would be incredible, if they could. In
point of size she is likely to be a kitten always, being extremely small of her
age, but time, I suppose, that spoils everything, will make her also a cat. You
will see her, I hope, before that melancholy period shall arrive, for no
wisdom that she may gain by experience and reflection hereafter will compensate
the loss of her present hilarity. She is dressed in a tortoise-shell suit, and I
know that you will delight in her.

from The Works of William Cowper: His Life, Letters, and Poems (R. Carter & Brothers, 1851). William Cowper (British, 1731-1800) was a popular poet who wrote of everyday life in his time. It's pronounced "cooper", incidentally.

mice get bum symbolic rap

From Lucia Impelluso's Nature and Its Symbols (Los Angeles: The J Paul Getty Museum, 2004; Stephen Impelluso, translator):

Pliny writes that mice should not be despised because they can be useful,
since they have the power to presage the future.
In the Bible they are seen in a negative light as spreaders of plague, and
in the popular imagination they are also hated for their ability to infest and
devour food supplies.Quite likely this is the source of their image as demonic
creatures hostile to man.

roman dog names

The United Nations of Roma Victrix -- unrv.com -- is an exhaustive yet entertaining site on things Roman. I surfed on by to see if I could learn a bit about Roman war dogs, and stumbled instead upon a list of Roman dog names:

Ferox. male: "Savage".
Craugis. female: "Yapper".
Lachne. female: "Shaggy".
Scylax or Skylax. male: "Puppy".

A long list here.
Also, note was made of a little girl-dog mentioned by the poet Martial. Issa was her name, and her "daddy" loved her very much:

Issa is naughtier than Catullus' sparrow, Issa is purer than a dove's kiss, Issa
is more endearing than all the girls, Issa is dearer than Indian gemstones, Issa
is Publius' pet puppy. If she complains, you will think she is speaking; she
feels sorrow and joy. She lies up against his neck and takes her slumber, in
such a way that not one of her breaths is felt. And when she is forced by the
desire of her bladder, she has never disappoints the bedspread by a single drop,
but with caressing paw she rouses him and warns to put her down, and asks to be
lifted up. So great is the modesty within the chaste puppy that she knows not of
Venus; nor have we found a man worthy of such a tender girl. So that her final
day might not snatch her away completely, Publius is producing her likeness in a
painted board, in which you will see an Issa so like her that she herself is not
so like herself. So put Issa alongside the picture: either you will think both
are real, or you will think both are painted.

Found this at a brilliant blog on Martial's earthy poetry.

puzzlingly earnest rottweiler video

Most folks know that the Rottweiler was a "war dog" for the Roman military. It's not totally that simple. The dog we know today is likely an admixture of the Roman cattle-herding dogs (that kept army beef moving on its hooves), mastiff type breeds, and local sheepdogs around the Wurttemberg area of Germany, including the locality of Rottweil.

Despite bad press and worse owners on occasion, Rotties are great dogs -- my mother had and treasured one for years that was basically her extra child. The breed inspires great loyalty. . .

. . . and videos like this -- captioned in Spanish, and soundtracked with Rammstein's "Mutter."

???!?

Stick with it till the end though. There's puppies.

plimoth pets

Don't I mean "Plymouth"? Not in this case, for I have been looking at the excellent website for the original plantation's living history museum, also known as Wampanoag Homesite to reflect Native American co-existence with the settlers.

In the kids' homework help section there's a look at the cultural differences between the Wampanoag and colonial attitude towards animals. One group finds them useful workers, one group calls them free friends. You go see which.

There's a page of Pilgrim phrases, in which we learn a cat was called a "mouser." Does that mean in my house we should call them "eaters"? And for little museum-goers there's pages for coloring, many starring a little guy named Felix, a ship's cat.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

dog archaeology

I didn't hear about this when it happened in September, but a medieval castle was recently unearthed in the UK - complete with a carefully composed dog burial. So I'll send you to News for Medievalists to learn about that!

"first advertisement for cat food"

Not really. The narrator of the clip is just being puckish, and it's irresistable, because he's got a thick French accent. But what he's talking about is this clip by the very early filmmakers Auguste and Louis Lumiere, in which a little girl in a huge sun hat waves a tidbit around for a dark longhaired cat.

The clip is attributed to the turn of the 20th century; for a moment, a little girl and her pet, both long gone now, are alive and happy in the sun, as if there were no difference between yesterday and tomorrow.

the urban dog experience

Even in the middle of the city, it's easy for humans to be isolated from each other. We scurry along doing this and that, not getting enough time outside, oftentimes not socializing with any living being unless it's in the office or can get us a better office.

What's the solution? Well, frequently, it's dogs.

Is your dog going to poop inside? Advance your career? Make a complete stranger in the park smile and say "Good dog! What a lovely dog!" No. No. Yes.

But life in the city, and increasingly in the burbs (do NOT get me started on homeowners associations), is restrictive on dogs. Where to find others who want their dogs to run and play?

If you're in the Portland/Vancouver area, as I was on a visit home recently, you can check in at PortlandPooch.com. Find a service, find a park, check out the photo gallery (of which this photo is my favorite so far).

met an artist: sarah angst

Yesterday while attending the Best of the Northwest crafts festival -- something which kicks off my holiday season most delightfully -- I had the great pleasure of meeting Sarah Angst.

An artist and printmaker residing in Bozeman MT, she works primarily with interpretations of flora and fauna (her blueberries are fabulous), and cites Art Nouveau as a stylistic inspiration. That movement too used the natural world as a springboard for its flowing motifs; she has chosen to work with simpler linear forms. Lest you think simpler = easier, I assure you it's not: every stroke of the pen or graver must be strong and clear, and the grasp of what the image must "say" must be sure.

That being said, here's perfect visual essence of puppy: Sarah's "Play Ball."


Go now and visit Sarah Angst's website, learn how she creates these images, see the gallery, and check out the online shop.

(just a note to the lee county clowder)

Hi Radcliffe Allie Luna and Ollie,

Thanks so much for asking how I am. I am still pretty hollow after losing Zozo, and I find I can't look at photos of her yet or think too much about her. It still makes me cry. It's lame of me, but I can't help it.

But yet I really think I'm getting better. Elizabeth is such a riot I can't help it -- the other day we were all watching a Netflix. (Ten Canoes, if I remember, which I highly recommend.) She was sitting on my lap gnawing away at me, and then I looked down to discover she had gone sweetly to sleep -- with her fanglets sunk in my index finger.

And I'm finding myself singing again, of all things. Granted, when you hear I've been singing Kiss's "Sure Know Something," everyone may not think that's an improvement, but hey, I AM singing.

Hugs to all y'all.

"his fidelity without deceit"

(First things first: Happy belated birthday, Boy -- I likes me a cat that can party hard.)

The title of today's post comes from Queen Victoria's epitaph for her spaniel Dash, the companion of her youth: "His attachment was without selfishness, his playfulness without malice, his fidelity without deceit." This is the dog that she came home to after her coronation at the tender age of 18, promptly shucking off her queenly gear to pop him into a bath.

She usually did have her priorities straight. Of course, we are talking about a mother as well - the kind who would muse in a family letter that perhaps her son Bertie and his wife weren't going to have very bright children, since they both had such small heads. I am serious. Go read Queen Victoria in her Letters and Journals if you don't believe me.

I digress. I actually wanted to direct you to a very well done site belonging to Hartsdale Pet Cemetery and Crematorium. Among its wealth of interesting information is a page on the history of pet burials. The point is made that the genesis of pet cemeteries was the 19th-century urban experience, which had very few options for pet "disposal," all of them nasty. Things are blessedly different now. Read about it.

kitten wisdom from india

From Sayings of Ramakrishna, courtesy of SacredTexts.com. (Amazing site, by the way.)


93. The young of a monkey clasps and clings to its mother. The young kitten cannot clasp its mother, but mews piteously whenever it is near her. If the young monkey lets go its hold on its mother, it falls down and gets hurt. This is because it depends upon its own strength; but the kitten runs no such risk, as the mother herself carries it about from place to place. Such is the difference between self-reliance and entire resignation to the will of God.


And, not that we have tigers for pets, but today I really needed to read this one:


13. It is true that God is even in the tiger, but we must not go and face the animal. So it is true that God dwells even in the most wicked, but it is not meet that we should associate with the wicked.


The Hindu believe that the cat is associated with the kind, nurturing Goddess of Childbirth, Shasthi, who writes the child's future on its forehead on the sixth day after the birth of the child.

cat quotes new to me

"No amount of time can erase the memory of a good cat, and no amount of masking tape can ever totally remove his fur from your couch.” -- Leo Buscaglia (Oh, how true it is)

"The phrase "domestic cat" is an oxymoron." -- George Will (George Will has an opinion on cats!?)

“There is no snooze button on a cat who wants breakfast” -- Anonymous

"The dog may be wonderful prose, but only the cat is poetry"-- French proverb

"If you would know a man, observe how he treats a cat." -- Robert Heinlein

Apropos of that last, Heinlein was a true cat lover, and many of those creatures pop up in his work. Here's a blog page with a couple of Heinlein-cat photos! (Scroll down.)

muttmobile

I drive a New Beetle.


Large, insane spaniel = does not get to ride in the New Beetle.

(see above ) = rides in the curatorial spouse's 1996 Jeep Cherokee. Now that's a good insane spaniel car.

What other cars are good for doggy transport? Are you actually thinking about that? Don't. DogCars has done it for you.

Nissan Murano? Feh. Not any good for hauling a dog of heft.

Volvo XC90? 5 paws, my roadrunners.

big ol cat feet

Yesterday I had lunch at a co-worker's house, where I met her three Main Coon cats. One of them had splendid polydactyl feet:

Some people think Maine Coons are kind of supposed to be polydactyl. A high percentage of the breed does tend to be. That may possibly be because Puritan settlers brought them on board ship and settled in Yarmouth, MA and Halifax, Nova Scotia. Neither of which is Maine, I know, but it IS conveniently located in between there. Here's a great article on Maine Coons.

expressionist dog

* Note: the earlier title ("expressionist cat") has to do with me being positive I'd quickly find an image of Marc's Three Cats. Oh, and being half asleep. Bad curator!

Franz Marc (1880-1916) was a member of German's Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider) group, which produced art making strong emotional and symbolic statements through a use of dramatic color and form. He was fond of horse imagery, and his colors are allied with identification: blue is more masculine, yellow more feminine. Other animals appeared in his work, though none so devotedly as the horse. Tragically, the day before he was killed in battle in WWI, he was present at the bombing of a stableful of horses. I was told that story in grad school and I still hate it.


Take a look at 1910-11's gentle Dog Lying in the Snow, from the Stadelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt.

leporidae coolness

"Leporids are the approximately 50 species of rabbits and hares which form the family Leporidae." (Thanks a mill, again, Wikipedia.)

Do you see a new site on my favorites list? Yes you do. Hopscotch is all things cool and bunny, courtesy of D. Elizabeth, who commented here a few posts back. Check out the Bunny of the Week, the post on the Stanford Bunny, the link to 30-Second Bunnies Theater (ooh, so clever).

A motherlode of all things bun. I stand in awe.

jade rabbit

It's 1 7/8 x 1 1/4 x 3/16 in. Only a button.

Highly stylized down to pretty much body and huge ears, it delivers maximum rabbit imagery in a tiny area. Somehow it made its way from 10th century BC China (Westen Zhou Dynasty) to Chicago.

Wonder if it was meant to call forth association with the "Jade Rabbit" of the Chinese Moon Festival:

In this legend, three fairy sages transformed themselves into pitiful old
men and begged for something to eat from a fox, a monkey and a rabbit. The fox
and the monkey both had food to give to the old men, but the rabbit,
empty-handed, offered his own flesh instead, jumping into a blazing fire to cook
himself. The sages were so touched by the rabbit's sacrifice that they let him
live in the Moon Palace where he became the "Jade Rabbit."

zoey coast to coast

Sam Allen is a photographer based in Portland, ME, but she doesn't stay there all the time. She goes coast to coast, making appointments in various cities to take dog portraits.

They're good.

She has some help in this task: her dog Zoey, who serves as travel partner and official blogger. This is Zoey on the South Dakota Badlands:

Humans baffle me sometimes (actually, often). This is a strange place to visit.
There is no water to play in, no squirrels to play with, and nothing edible to
be scarfed. Just these pointy rocks. My humans said these rocks were bad. They
didn’t seem bad to me. They just sat there. What could they have done?

She goes to the St. Louis Arch; she goes to Niagara Falls. She meets the catering crew of Extreme Home Makeover. Man! What a lucky dog!

fup no more

Sigh. I am sorry to report that Fup, the steadfast feline employee of Powell's Technical Books in Portland, passed away on October 25. She was 19. A tribute here.

Her health had been deteriorating for a while, so her vet made a special trip to put her to sleep at the store; she died, therefore, at home, surrounded by friends and coworkers. I wish Zozo could have had that.

I always enjoyed seeing Fup when I was at Powell's Technical. Everyone, give some love and respect to your bookstore cat of choice today.

Boy, I must have been upset, I misspelled "always."
And now I go back to watching "Tiger Week" on Animal Planet. Mm!

bunnies unite

Short post today...
...but did you know there's a House Rabbit Society? Like Union 541 for bunnies? Well, no, but they do have this benevolent organization to educate and rescue.

And entertain: there's a true stories page where you can read about Buggsy, the bunny who keeps on truckin', or Justice, the law office rabbit. There's a fun page. Good bunny info overall.

rossetti's pets

From his very earliest days he had the desire to become a painter, and ¡n due course of time he attended a well-known art academy, and subsequently the Royal Academy Antique School ; but his efforts were fitful, and great as was his desire to become an artist he found at times the necessary technical difficulties almost too great to be overcome. Never thoroughly grounded in draughtsmanship, he felt the want of such education to the last, and there are few pictures, indeed, by the great colorist which are free from faults of drawing. As a boy he had a great love for animals, a taste that never left him ; and as the child used to be delighted with a pet dormouse, which he kept in the drawer of a cabinet, so the man was interested through many years in a long succession of pets, ranging from a little downy owl, all head, to woodchucks and wombats and armadilloes.

-- From the New York Times, May 2, 1886, Wednesday, page 11. I'm trying to write a novel in which Rossetti is one of the main three figures, and it always tickles me to hear about his menageries. I'd never run across a contemprary account before.

Wanted to post on dormice but couldn't find anything really engaging yet.

"i'm comfortably well off"

That's one of my favorite Daffy Duck quotes - he's just hit a jackpot of some variety, and in the middle of screaming "I'm rich! I'm rich!!" he stops and says calmly. . . well, see the title. Which led me to this treasure trove of Daffyisms. Humor me, it's payday.

I am sure the richest pets in the world would never do such a thing -- certainly not "Moose," the Jack Russell who played Eddie on Frazier. He worked too hard for that 3.7 mil.

But there's a pet out there sitting on $372 million. Can you believe?? Want to see the list? And if youknow where I can learn a bit more about any of these, let me know. By the way, it's quite legal to leave your pets $$. For help with that and other legal sticky wickets, see Dog Law, published by Nolo Press.

Ancient pet thoughts

So did you see in the news that Egypt has decided to put Tutanhkamen's mummy on display? It's in a protective case, but yes, you may see his actual face and feet. He looks about as well as can be expected.

This made me think once more on Egyptian animals. I found a wonderful page on the domesticated animals of that long-ago fine civilization, including just about every animal I could imagine they'd have.

Hear the rebuke an Egyptian military commander gives a defeated prince after seeing the poor shape of his horses:

As I have lived and loved Re and breath is in my nostrils, thus my heart grows
heavy seeing how these horses have been starved, which is worse than anything
you have done from the evil in your heart.

And did you know the first known cat name, Nedjem, dates to the reign of Thutmose III? Learn some more here.

"a man's best friend is his dog"

I bet you never thought to wonder where that saying came from. I sure didn't. Seems so self-evident no one had to invent it.

But the phrase originated in Warrensburg, Missouri, in 1870, during the Burden vs. Hornsby court case. Charles Burden had a fine hunting dog, named Old Drum, that had been shot by a neighbor, Leonidas Hornsby. Somehow the case became such an intricate wrangle that it reached the Supreme Court of Missouri. There Burden was represented by Senator George Graham Vest. In the course of the final appeal, Vest spoke of the value of a dog, including these words:

The best friend a man has in this world may turn against him and become his
enemy. His son or daughter that he has reared with loving care may prove
ungrateful. Those who are nearest and dearest to us, those whom we trust with
our happiness and our good name, may become traitors to their faith. The money
that a man has, he may lose. It flies away from him, perhaps when he needs it
the most. A man’s reputation may be sacrificed in a moment of ill-considered
action. The people who are prone to fall on their knees to do us honor when
success is with us may be the first to throw the stone of malice when failure
settles its cloud upon our heads. The one absolutely unselfish friend that a man
can have in this selfish world, the one that never deserts him and the one that
never proves ungrateful or treacherous is his dog.

Rest of the speech and the story here.

cats have a saint

They surely do: St. Gertrude of Nivelles, born 626 in Belgium, died 659 in Nivelles, in the convent where she had been abbess since age 20.

She's also the patroness of travelers in search of lodging, gardeners and herbalists, and those that have recently died. She is often depicted with mice running up a staff that she holds. This is because she is invoked against mice, of course, being the patroness of cats. But part of her iconography (the practice of recognizing symbols for ideas in art) sees the mice as representative of souls that are newly dead. A popular belief in Gertrude's time and years after held that souls went on a three-day journey to the next life, and that the first night of this journey was spent specially under Gertrude's care.

Learn about Gertrude here (a very pretty site) and here.