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Washington, United States
loves: you win if you guessed "pets" and "museums". Also books, art history, travel, British punk, Korean kimchi, bindis, martinis, and other things TBD. I will always make it very clear if a post is sponsored in any way. Drop me a line at thepetmuseum AT gmail.com !

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

"cats. some people like them and some do not."

Hold the presses! The Egyptians loved cats. Cats were very badly treated in the Middle Ages. Short haired mixed breed cats make up most of the domestic cat population. And - wait for it - this guy in Seattle invented this post, with some catnip and covered in carpet, and cats can claw it.

Well, I guess it was news in April 1946.

Seriously, this article I have found online from LIFE Magazine (April 22, 1946: v 20 no. 16) contains some fresh info I haven't seen before. Author Roger Butterfield includes a sizable shot of Timmie, a black and white cat that was bosom buddies with President Coolidge's canary Caruso. I learned that a cat helped build the Grand Coulee Dam by carrying a string tied to its tail through a drain pipe, which ultimately meant a cable got threaded. A half-Persian cat named Mr. Hafiz-Ali used to purr on the air daily at 8 AM on station WJZ. (Oh! What a great idea for NPR.) One of the oldest proverbs on record is the Sanskrit saying, "The white cat eats the gray mice of the twilight." And a Chicago banker named Rockwell Sayre hated cats so much that he paid 10 cents for every dead cat brought to his house. (Hiss.)

Oh, and the ads are included, so I learned 4 reasons why Fleischmann's makes the best martini.

It's a blast from the past! Want to see it?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Fleischmann's "dry dryness" sounds like something from Darrin Stephens' ad agency.

Human catnip sounds so much less fun than ours.

curator said...

Oh I know!! The ads were hysterical!

Anonymous said...

And then there is the radio that gives them both a thrill!

Everycat said...

You could have warned us about the "Ice Amputation"

(with an ad for a PAIR of shoes right next to it!)

What a hoot!

W.Wuudler

curator said...

(Whicky: **gulp** I actually missed that one)