tibbar tibbar

Tomorrow is the first of the month. Pay attention: would you like to ensure good luck for the whole month of May -- and every month thereafter? Why, this can be yours for no more than the words "rabbit rabbit". Say them first thing in the morning, before you say a thing else.

Had you ever heard of this before? No, me neither, but lots of people have. It seems to be at root a British extension of the bunny as luck-bringer.

White rabbit, white rabbit to you.

"the cat" -- a book review from 1936

The French writer Colette loved cats. This is not a stretch. Writers do, a lot of the time. In the mid 1930's Colette wrote a slim novel titled The Cat, which was reviewed by Margaret Wallace of the New York Times.

Colette was the source of many well-known cat quotes:

--Our perfect companions never have fewer than four feet.
--There are no ordinary cats.
--By associating with the cat one only risks becoming richer.
--Time spent with cats is never wasted.
--The cat is the animal to whom the Creator gave the biggest eye, the softest
fur, the most supremely delicate nostrils, a mobile ear, an unrivalled paw and a
curved claw borrowed from the rose-tree.

a lovely medieval treat!

The Aberdeen Bestiary is a particularly fine example of its type, and was created in Britain around 1200. Entirely digitised, the Bestiary can be viewed page by page with translations of the Latin text. The illustrations are surprisingly vivid still after all these years.

Much work has been done by the Aberdeen Bestiary Project to record the history of the book itself as well.

Dogs come in for a most sympathetic treatment among the creatures listed. Here is a bit of the text:

When a dog picks up the track of a hare or a deer and comes to a place where the
trail divides or to a junction splitting into several directions, it goes to the
beginning of each path and silently reasons with itself, as if by syllogism, on
the basis of its keen sense of smell. 'Either the animal went off in this
direction,' it says, 'or that, or certainly it took this turning.'

I will send you to the first page -- be sure and click the "Next" link to see them all. Enjoy.

a greek folktale

A very long time ago all the animals decided that they would gather and converse
with one another. When all the animals had finally come together at the
meeting place they all looked at one another and noticed that the only animal
that had not come to their meeting place was the camel.

It was then decided by all the animals that one animal must go and find the missing animal. None of the animals wanted to go and find the missing camel as they all did
not want to leave from the conversations they were currently having. Not
even one animal volunteered to go and find the camel. The animals decided
that the only way to resolve the problem with the missing camel was through a
toss, they would throw a stick in the air and whoever the stick landed in front
of would have to fetch the camel.

The fox threw up the stick and it landed in front of the dog. The dog was very unhappy with what had resulted and asked the other animals. "How can I find the camel when I do not know what it even looks like?" The dog thought that it was very smart and hoped to get itself out of its predicament by this excuse. The fox being much wiser then the dog quickly answered the dog's question and said, "You will know the camel by the hump that appears on its back." The dog was happy as he felt his task would be very easy and replied, "Very well if that is the case, then I shall surely find the camel quite easily." The fox giggled at the dog's reply.

As the dog went on its way it met a cat. The cat became frightened at seeing the dog appearing out of nowhere and arched its back in fear. The dog saw the arch and believed its eyes -- it had found the camel with the hump in its back! The dog asked the cat to please follow it, and the cat did as the dog politely asked. The cat followed behind the dog with its back still arched, as it was cautious.

The dog then approached the meeting place where all the other animals were gathered and proclaimed, "I have found the camel!" The animals began to laugh uncontrollably and tears ran from their eyes. How stupid could the dog be they said to each other, not being able to notice the difference between a camel and a cat! The dog became enraged as he saw the cat lower the arch in its back. The dog then began to chase the cat as it is doing till this day!

-- So that's why! This tale is courtesy of the folktales page on Greek Spider.

i r in shape

". . . round is shape."

That's a great lolcat caption and led me today to think about fat cats I have known. I don't even count the one sitting on me right now: Zozo's not that fat, the vet said so.

Turns out I have never heard before today of Tiddles, who lived in London's Paddington Station for most of his 13 years, spoiled beyond belief by the visitors to the ladies' lavatory where he hung out. He had his own fridge, lived 13 years, and then he died because he was big and fat, so don't let that happen to your kitty. That being said, people do. Did you know some very fat cats can't put their tails down? The sheer bulk of their pudge makes it stand up from the base of the spine a bit. Here's some other risks of the fatness:

• Cardiovascular disease
  Diabetes mellitus (sugar diabetes), specifically late onset diabetes.
  Hepatic lipidosis (a type of liver disease)
  Lameness due to arthritis (joints wear out due to carrying too much weight)
  Cystitis (lower urinary tract disease).

whir whir whir

We have a little cotton IKEA rug in front of the door. The dog likes it. Specifically he likes to step onto the rug, bend nose to tail, and go roundandroundandround. When said rug is cocooned round his legs he will drop down at last and sigh.

We look at him funny. We ask him what he thinks he is doing. He wiggles his eyebrows at us but that's all.

Luckily, the Straight Dope has already answered the burning question of why dogs circle before lying down.

don't look back!

"Matagots" or "Magician Cats" were said to bring wealth to the home where they
are well fed. According to French legend, a Matagot must be lured by a plump
chicken, then carried home without the prospective owner once looking backwards.
Then, at each meal, the Matagot must be given the first mouthful of food. In
return, it will gives its owner a gold coin each morning. In England, Dick
Whittington's cat was a Matagot who brought its owner good fortune and changed
his luck from bad to good.

-- From the Cat Snips page of Moggies, a Brit cat site. Dick Whittington was three times Mayor of London in the late 14th - early 15th century, which legend says was due to the mousing prowess of his cat and the fortune its sale brought him. Here's a long but classic version of the tale.

a small break

I was playing today, so no deep and thoughtful post. I did run across a shop in Seattle's Queen Anne District called Oslo's. Why? Because that's the name of the owner's golden retriever, who chewed his tennis ball happily the entire time we were there.

What other businesses named after pets can you name? Tell me. Till then, here's a list of office cats.

ptui!

The soul or spirit was often supposed in olden times to assume a zoömorphic form, and to make its way at death through the mouth of man in a visible form, sometimes as a pigeon, sometimes as a mouse or rat. A red mouse indicated a pure soul; a black mouse, a soul blackened by pollution; a pigeon or dove, a saintly soul.

-- From E. Cobham Brewer 1810–1897. Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. 1898. Courtesy of Bartleby.com.

I had a black mouse once. I can't remember her name, which is awful, but I remember how friendly and engaging a pet she was. She liked to be petted with a pinky finger, and liked to nest in my scarf for a few minutes if I was wearing one. Her tail was as elegant as a Chinese calligrapher's line. When she died I buried her in a teabag box full of dried rose petals.

dog show

All week I have been feeding you tidbits from the recent Museum of Fine Arts Houston's exhibit, "Best of Show: The Dog in Art from the Renaissance to Today." I hope you have enjoyed these glimpses of the dog as cultural signifier and as player in his/her own right. Today I'm sending you to the show itself, in a way: the overview, an image gallery, and a neat game.

Happy Friday!

o master

The nineteenth century, as I mentioned yesterday, saw a surge in the philosophy and portrayal of the dog as owner of a soul. Granting them souls also meant investing them with the ability to love, to understand, and to mourn in their way. Few have shown this more sweetly - and more keenly - than Sir Edwin Landseer (English, 1802-1873).

In Attachment (1829) Landseer seized upon the 19th-c dog story par excellence: in 1805 a young artist set off on a tour of the Lake District to go mountain climbing, with no one but his terrier as company. Three months later, a resident of the area heard a dog barking and found the climber, dead from a fall, and the terrier watching over him. To make this even more tragic, the dog had had a puppy sometime in that hopeless watching, which didn't make it.

This story does not make dinner party guests very cheerful, by the way. However, as Rosemblum points out, "In one small canvas Landseer distills the widest spectrum of human drama, from the malevolent potential of untamed nature to the harmonious but heartbreaking emotional bond between man and beast that here reaches the almost operatic climax of star-crossed lovers." (Rosenblum, Best in Show, pp. 63-65.)

Here's another question for you. Do you suppose that the domesticated dog developed these abilities over the last few centuries as a result of breeding or interaction with humans disposed to see these qualities? Or were they always there and simply not recognized due to the beliefs and priorities of their human cultures?

motherhood

I'm a little late today, as I was attending a volunteer appreciation party at the local art museum. But I'm here now and ready to consider the dog in art once more.

Today I am sure you'll enjoy Jean-Baptise Oudry's Bitch Nursing her Puppies of 1752. (You'll easily see which one it is - but I am afraid the image is reversed, and I could not find a better.) Oudry painted several subjects with excellence, but shone in his paintings of animals. This look at a French pointer tenderly seeing to the care and feeding of her roly-poly pups was particularly intimate, and showed a creature giving almost sapient care and attention. As William Secord further points out in Best of Show (p. 106), the rationalist notion that dogs have no souls became more difficult to maintain in the face of such maternal devotion. This new interest in the mind and soul of the dog grew to be well developed in nineteenth-century paintings -- let us look at one tomorrow.

Meanwhile, if you have a dog or few, give them a scratch and try imagining a doggy thought. I know what my dog is thinking as I write this. He is thinking, "I enjoy my bone immensely, but I would also really like to lick that ice cream bowl."

I had a picture of this philosophy in action, but it won't post. What gives?

take me walkies to your leader

As I promised, another section from Best In Show. Perhaps this will surprise you - a bit about Keith Haring! I remember well how fresh and funny and wild Haring's art was in the very early 80's, and how there was a daring to his work, too. He was probably the first graffiti-derived artist to make it big, and yes, I know about Basquiat, but he never got the break he deserved.
Rosenblum (page 82) talks about Haring's dogs as iconic characters that stepped into fantasy:

In the 1980's, when Star Trek and Star Wars ruled imaginations young and
old, the short-lived Keith Haring, a victim of AIDS, invented the equivalent of
cartoonlike hieroglyphs from a remote civilization, archetypal images of humans
and animals in mythic adventures that, like an inspired gremlin, he spread far
beyond the confines of art museums, all the way to T-shirts and subway
stations. In his vast repertory of ideograms. . . dogs figure large. In
one of these images, made with a marker, indicative of his role as a graffiti
artist, an Earth dog barks not at the moon but at a UFO that may be planning an
abduction to outer space.

I couldn't find a way to send you to the image Rosenblum uses, but here's another dog/UFO matchup: Untitled (1982).

Don't you love that run-on sentence? Remember, Rosenblum is a professional. Don't try this at home!

let us now talk of non cat things

Nobody knows what my girl had, except that it was a Fever of Unknown Origin. I didn't know that was an actual cat diagnosis. It is.

Let us move to art that is inspired by dogs. I have been leafing with delight through Best In Show: The Dog in Art from the Renaissance to Today (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, in association with The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Bruce Museum, Greenwich, 2006). The show upon which this fine book is based uses varying portrayals of the dog over time as a mirror of social and cultural concerns in the West. I think we'll look at a few this week. The only caveat I have is that I will have to send you often to outside links for the images, as I have no wish to be a sloppy curator and steal my exhibits.

So, today a peek at Philip Reinagle's 1805 Portrait of an Extraordinary Musical Dog. Robert Rosenblum has this to say about this elegant yet funny look at a brown spaniel playing a patriotic tune on the piano:

Seated on a piano stool before a window that frames an expansive landscape and
sky, the spaniel stares us down with the intense eyes of another Beethoven, a
Romantic genius immersed in his music-making. . . The score is apparently a
florid variation on the tune "God Save the King,"of a sort that might have
delighted a concert audience; but more to the point, the furry pianist is
intended as a joke on the succession of human child prodigies who awed the
public, beginning with Mozart's performances in 1764-65 and continuing with
another infant pianist, William Crotch, who in 1777, at the age of two, could
play "God Save the King," and two years later performed for the king and
queen. (p. 56)

joy!

Here she is, home at last. For the past several hours the vets' progress notes read "Angry." Sometimes "Angry!!"

"Is that a good sign?" one of them asked when she called to give me an update.

"Yes," I said, "that's absolutely business as usual. Not a big fan of stuff she doesn't like."

And so today I celebrate with a poem a thousand years old about a wise man and his values:

Chang Tuan's Cats

Scholar Chang Tuan was fond of cats,

And had seven of them,

Wonderful beasts with wonderful names. They were:

Guardian of the East, White Phoenix, Purple Blossom, Drive-Away-Vexation, Brocade Sash, Cloud Pattern, Ten Thousand strings of Cash

Each was worth several pieces of gold

And nothing could persuade Chang

To part with them.

After Wang Chih, c. 1100 C.E.

curator is sad

Yes. I am sorry to report that I am sad. I am even sorrier to report that my utterly beloved orange tabbycat has gone and come down with some mysterious high fever, which means she's now spending the night at the emergency vet.

And so my offering today is an old Russian prayer.

Hear our prayer Lord, for all animals,
May they be well-fed and well-trained and happy;
Protect them from hunger and fear and suffering;
And, we pray, protect specially, dear Lord,
The little cat who is the companion of our home,
Keep her safe as she goes abroad,
And bring her back to comfort us.
Anonymous

fleabitten

I did not know what color you are when you are a fleabitten horse. So when I saw that listed in yesterday's list of horse attributes, naturally I assumed it was some ye olde medieval expression.

I was wrong. The color "fleabitten" is still extant. Allow me to rip off Wikipedia's definition:

Fleabitten gray is a color consisting of a white hair coat with small speckles
or "freckles" of red-colored hair throughout. Most horses who become fleabitten
grays still go through a brief period when they are pure white. . . One unique
form of fleabitten gray is the "bloody shouldered" horse. This is an animal that
is so heavily flea-bitten on certain parts of the body, usually the shoulder
area, that it almost appears as if blood had been spilled on the horse, hence
the name. In the traditions of the desert Bedouin people who bred the
Arabian horse, the "bloody shoulder" was a prized trait in a war mare and much
desired.

The wind of heaven is that which blows between a horse's ears. ~Arabian Proverb

"four things were necessary in a fine horse"

The ancients believed that four things were necessary in a fine horse:
first, that he should be well formed and of goodly size, with a large chest and
muscular limbs; secondly, that he should be beautiful, with a fine head, curved
neck, and thick mane and tail; then, that he should show great spirit, which can
be judged from the trembling of his limbs. Lastly, the horse should have a
fine color. The ancients considered a chestnut horse the finest but others
prefer the colors in this order: bay, golden, ruddy, chestnut, fawn, gray,
roan, hoary, silver, white, flea-bitten, and black. Of all the colors, the
worst is the piebald.

Another selection from A Cloisters Bestiary.

cat science, circa 1250 ad

Bestiaries were medieval works that served a purpose somewhere between natural history, philosophy, and iconography. I've found a lovely compendium from The Cloisters in New York:
A Cloisters Bestiary (New York, NY: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1960).

Here's the entry on cats:

The cat is a merry animal when it is young. It plays and leaps about and can be
led to play with a straw. In older age it waxes fat and sleepy, but in spite of
this, it is quick and fearsome to mice. When a cat with his stealth and cunning
catches a mouse, he will play with him at his leisure. When the play is done he
will eat the mouse. The cat is remarkable in one feature: if he is thrown down
from a high place, he will land unharmed on his four feet. Also, his eyes shine
so that he can see clearly in the dark.
In the season of love a cat will fight continually with other cats for his wife. There is great screeching and crying as they rend one another fiercely with their claws. The cat that has a fine pelt is proud of it and shows it off, but if his coat is damaged or burnt, he sits at home dejected.
The cat with the fair coat must be quick or he may end up at the furrier's.

shhhh

Your week started off at full speed, didn't it?

Take a moment courtesy of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. They've got a lovely Japanese late-Meiji (1908) postcard of Three Quiet Cats. Be sure and check out the deft invoking of paw-pads on that bottom one.

Did you know postcards became popular in Japan just after the inaugaration of a new postal system in 1900?

happy easter!

Yes, the spring/eggs/fertility/bunny theme is everywhere, so I'll bring you something a little different to enjoy while you bite off those yummy chocolate ears (you know you will).

Back in 1978, Hungarian children's television presented an animated series called A Kockásfülű nyúl -- The Rabbit with the Checkered Ears. Without dialogue, each episode portrayed the rabbit flying in on his ears to problem-solve for the four child characters. For example, one of the little girls has made a cake and proudly brings it to a table in the garden -- where a bad dog eats it! No matter. The R. with the C. E. copters in and teaches her to make blintzes. (Note: Blintzes are delish. You should try them.) Here's an English-language homepage for our checkered hero.

Meanwhile over in Pasadena, California, a nice couple has turned their home into The Bunny Museum, which you may visit by appointment.

And for those of us who are completely disgusted by the non-springlike weather up here, Ferry Halim has another enchanting game on his Orisinal site. Make the snow bunny hop up on the bells falling from the sky for points: Winterbells.

Happy Easter to you one and all!

the mug shot was fuzzy

From weirdasianews.com:

Attention, Guangzhou residents. Be on the lookout for a big white dog who steals cellphones.
A man surnamed Huang who lives in Guangzhou’s Panyu District found a white dog in his home on Monday morning. Huang wasn’t concerned about how the dog had entered at first, and his daughter also wanted to play with it.

But when the dog saw the cellphone that Huang had put on his tea table, it immediately took it into its mouth and ran off.

Local police later told Huang the dog had been trained by thieves and was actually a “hardened criminal”.

* * *
Okay, but on the flip side, I never knew that the World Cup Soccer trophy had been stolen in 1966 and found by a Jack Russell called Pickles. That story here.

grecian weasel

Did you know Herodotus recorded that weasels were found in the Silphium region of Libya?

And Aristotle believed that before a weasel took on a snake in battle it first ate wild rue, which snakes didn't like?

Or that Aristophanes seemed to think that ferrets smell like flatulence?

The guy at All-About-Ferrets.com does, and he's passed his Ancient Greek Ferret homework on to you! Good job it is, too.

equal neruda time

After yesterday's poem I feel it only fair to point you to a poem cheerier in mood and written for a feline friend: Cat's Dream.

Then watch your kitty sleep with a newfound respect. I dare you not to!

his bad manners and his cold nose

My dog has died.
I buried him in the garden
next to a rusted old machine.

Pablo Neruda (1904-73), the Chilean poet and diplomat, was no stranger to the death of friends and the value of loyalties. He observed and recorded the Spanish Civil War, and was at one time exiled from Chile for his political leanings. These are a very few words to suggest this man's many adventures and many hard-won wisdoms.

When you read his poem "A Dog Has Died," you may see how the careful detachment of the politician doesn't cancel out loss. Neruda repeats that he will not speak of sadness or goodbyes, but at its heart, the poem is built out of just these things. He was well schooled in revealing the truths that were not permitted.

Some day I'll join him right there,
but now he's gone with his shaggy coat,
his bad manners and his cold nose,
and I, the materialist, who never believed
in any promised heaven in the sky
for any human being,
I believe in a heaven I'll never enter.
Yes, I believe in a heaven for all dogdom
where my dog waits for my arrival
waving his fan-like tail in friendship.

It's a longish poem -- read it all here.

southpaw

Another tidbit from The Straght Dope, and one which made four people at dinner the other day say "Noooo!" in that way that means Really!?:

Cats can be, very clearly, left-handed. So watch your kitty and see which paw they use most. All three of mine are righties so far, but if you're a lefty your pet may be right there with you. Read the snappy proof here.

perm

Guess where I'm going later today? To Seattle's yearly Edible Book Festival!

But yesterday I was busy getting a perm. It takes a day or two for a fresh one to settle in. Meanwhile I look a little like a certain new cat breed that spontaneously appeared on a cherry farm in The Dalles, Oregon: the LaPerm.

A Rex mutation appearing in 1982, the LaPerm breed is marked by shaggy-curled coats and affectionate personalities. They are also allied in a way with the Wishram Native American tribe of The Dalles. Several petroglyphs of "She Who Watches" (Tsagaglalal) are found in the area, and the Koehl family farm where the first LaPerm was born is near Wishram fishing and hunting grounds. As a result, LaPerm breeders often name their catteries and kittens in Native American fashion.

Some good history here. Breeder site with photos here!