elizabeth can keep me safe in travel!

So I gather from an extensive page I've found on animal symbolism, where the listing for Cat reads as follows:

Cat - feminine energy, mystical power, used to keep the wearer safe in travel, wholeness

They are speaking of a cat amulet or something of course. I must say I normally am wearing a cat thing somewhere when I travel, and my family remarks on my luck in that regard.

Check out some others:
Raccoon - dexterity, disguise
Raven - magic
Robin - growth, renewal
Rooster - courageous, warlike disposition, warmth and life of the Universe

Here they all are!

PS: Hey Museumgoers, I very recently got some not-great news about a family member's health, so do forgive if some of my posts seem a tad "mailed in". Wish us all luck and health. I wish you the same always.

cat haiku

Good old Google Books. I was looking for pet haiku this morning, finding oh pretty much the same couple of dozen no matter where I surfed. And then I saw the link to a small book published in 2001 by Deborah Coats: Cat Haiku. Not every page is available, but I get nuggets like:

I yowl to the moon;
I am king of the night. Hear
Me and weep, Fluffy.

Fresh kitty haiku! Take a peek.

two bolognese ducks

Yes, two pet ducks, living just outside Bologna, Italy. (A lovely city, I may add: one of Europe's oldest universities is there, so it's full of young people. And most of the buildings are pink.)

Their owners have prepared a loving, English-language page about raising them: "a difficult, toilsome, rewarding and, at times, incredibly funny task!" So do enjoy a European look at the lives of Pio Pis and Clothilde.

Oh yes, a cat got into the mix eventually, too.

the kittens are the bomb

Or "Les chatons - sont toujours la bombe," if you're Les Sans Culottes. They sing in French. They are wacky. And they have recorded a song called "Les chatons," -- The Kittens -- and here is a taste of the lyrics, translated for vous:

The kittens live in a castle
Their house is a kitten condo
A kitten first name Alejandro
Plays on his piano
Blue Turk a la Rondo
Look over there on the window sill
A kitten finds his reason for living

Read them bilingually here (scroll down to Les Chatons).

nova scotia cat, and musings catlike

I don't know whom Brad McCormick might be (other than Brad McCormick), but he went to Nova Scotia on vacation and got a great folk art wooden cat. And if you look below to his link about his Maine Coon kitten, you get all kinds of good stuff.

"A cat's gaze seems to be perfectly receptive. It sees all, in a universal receptiveness. A cat may be a kind of "universal witness". There is no questioning, only pure "receptiveness" (obviously, cats' famous "curiosity" is something different from this, which I shall not treat here). "

Plus he likens litterbox raking to that of a Japanese dry garden. He must not use Feline Pine.

pink rabbit

That's exactly what it is - multiplied a zillion.
In 2005, the art group Gelitin installed a project that had taken 5 years to knit: a massive pink bunny, flopped upon a hill above the village of Artesina, in Piemonte (Piedmont), Italy. As the Gelitin page says,

The things one finds wandering in a landscape: familiar things and utterly
unknown, like a flower one has never seen before, or, as Columbus discovered, an
inexplicable continent; and then, behind a hill, as if knitted by giant
grandmothers, lies this vast rabbit, to make you feel as small as a daisy.

Just how small? Ah, pix are worth a thousand words.

i submitted to icanhascheezburger

yes, I could have made another extra-brilliant post (ha ha) but instead I decided to submit thusly:

unexpected kitty joy in the city

This is the bus stop shelter roughly across from the Henry Art Gallery, U of Washington campus. We wandered up there today -- in the snow -- to hang out and see some art and read some books. I'd forgotten this charming scene was here, and snapped it with the handy cell cam - that's the curatorial spouse strolling by.

Note to all: I've got computer issues and have to get to some repair source somewhere, so no telling what's up for the next 2 or 3 days. Wish me luck.

whistler's dog

Yes, THAT Whistler, James Mc Neill Whistler (1834-1903), the one with the mom. Though he was a bit of pain to deal with, he was good to his dog, even with a catch:

Such was James McNeill Whistler's arrogance that when his dog developed a
throat problem, the famous painter insisted upon seeing London's most esteemed
throat specialist, rather than a simple vet. Despite his embarrassment,
the doctor dutifully agreed to see the dog, prescribed a course of treatment,
suggested keeping the 'patient' under observation, and charged Whistler a
substantial fee.
A few days later, Whistler received an urgent message from
the doctor. Concerned about his dog, Whistler raced over to see him.
Arriving at the doctor's office, the artist was cordially greeted and the
message explained: "Mr. Whistler, I have called you here to ask you to paint my
door."

Source: the excellent anecdotage.com.

boys and kitten, 1873

The Worcester (Massachusetts) Art Museum is fortunate to own this watercolor by Winslow Homer. When you see it, don't you immediately think of the way the sun bleaches out color in that dazzling summery way? And yet against all that fresh air and sunshine-drenched ground and wood, the black kitten stays a solid black, its fur soaking up all that radiance.

Ever touched a black cat in the sun? They're hot.

some fine, fresh hamster

. . . Courtesy of champythestripe at deviantArt.com. I was thinking a bit of hamster art would be good today, and while I didn't come up with any at my fave museums, I did scoot over to deviantArt. I decided I rather like the bold, confident line and sassy presentation of his cartoon critters.

Now not everything champy does is kiddie stuff, but you may have no fear everyone will like Cowboy Hamster, a crowd of 'em, or (I'm writing on my lunch hour here ) a hungry hammie.

hark, hark, the dogs do bark. . .

. . . The beggars are coming to town.
Some in rags, and some in jags,
And one with a velvet gown.

Remember that nursery rhyme? When I was little it never occurred to me to ask what they were coming for. Turns out that this rhyme goes back to 13th century England, and the "beggars" might be wandering minstrels or storytellers passing on propaganda within their tales. It's also possible that the "beggars" may be the monks turned out of the monasteries during Henry VIII's savage backlash against the Catholic Church. Check that stuff out here at www.rhymes.org.uk.

great, i'll take elizabeth to the uffizi

I stumbled across a news story from March 19th in the Manchester Guardian (an excellent paper) reporting that the Tuscan regional parliament is considering a bill regarding pet access.

If passed, this law would permit pet owners in Tuscany to take their cats, dogs, or whatever (pythons too I wonder? ferrets?) to any public place, including museums and the theatre. The pets would need to be certified as disease-free, and kept on a lead at all times (oh, there goes the python - I've never seen a python leash).

Having seen dogs everywhere else in Tuscany, including bars and sidewalk restaurants, I'm not surprised to see this bill under consideration. But not everyone thinks this is such a good idea. Read the story here.

a very large mouse

Katharina Fritsch (German, born 1959) says that she finds "the play between reality and apparition very interesting," and her work explores this by creating scrupulously realistic figures in surrealistic proportion or color. I'm particularly fond of her work Rat-King, a huge and stylized representation of the occasional phenomenon found in large amounts of rats living closely together (their tails become knotted and they can't move). But she's done other animal work that has a kinder appeal, and I found a few in the collection of Minneapolis' Walker Art Center. Here's Mouse, Poodle, and a most odd and elegant Cat.

shorty the squirrel had a long life

15 years, in fact. He lived in Tyler, Texas outside the county courthouse, and Miss Geneva Pillow looked after him devotedly. When he died in 1963, a very nice stone was put over his grave. It got stolen, though.

Shorty used to be kinda famous. Read about him here.

but does fido match my purse?

Ah, the tiny-dog-as-accessory debate. Still going on after oh pretty much centuries: remember my earlier post about an Elizabethan critic of those tiny lapdogs that "licke their lippes as they lie"?

LA Metblogs jumped into the fray recently, asking locals to vote on the 64 Worst Things About LA, and Teacup Dogs went up against Hipsters for the voting.

what is a dining room without a cat?

Well, it would certainly not be this lovely Bonnard canvas from the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Do you see the white cat on the chair? How about the other kitty's head peeping up from the brown chair at the table? The woman leaning over to look at the first cat is Marthe de Méligny, Bonnard's wife, who was a very shy woman. Here it seems she's relaxed and enjoying her Dining Room in the Country, in 1913.

dogs: source of cash?

Not MY dog, though we did name him Cash (it was a play on his parents' names). In years past, however, if you were fond of the nifty mechanical banks that were prevalent, why, a dog could hold all kinds of lucre for you till later.

Like this fine 1887 bulldog from the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. He's made of iron, but stick a copper on his tongue and he'll hold it for you. Lots of good stuff at the MIA - I promise to show you a few more coming up.

short post on a long doggie

Jen (see comments on last post) wasn't kidding: she sent me to The Long and Short of it All, and it is indeed the dachshund blog par excellence.

old photos starring dogs

This weekend I had the pleasure of spending time with an older friend while we worked on his memoirs. He's 89, and in the course of the day showed me a very old photo album of his relatives from around 1920-25. Some of them were holding cats and dogs - oh, how I wished we'd had a scanner handy.

So today I went looking for antique pet photos and I found some all right, courtesy of a photoset on Flickr called "Just Mutts." But how can one think of it as just mutts when you can behold a lavishly dressed dog, a tiny puppy eye to eye with you, or a dachshund one beat too late?

lost, uh, cat?

Someone in LA (by the look of it) was helpful, but unsure as to what precisely defines the common house cat.

Anybody know if this was a spoof? I haven't found out yet.

mow!

As in that variant of "meow!"
Jay Dyke has some "mows" and turned them into an "almost daily" comic strip. It's pretty cute, and so are the real "mows" that inspired him. (Check out their ratings.)

a cowch

A what now?

A couch shaped like a cow: a cowch. What a great idea! And it was devised by a woman who loves cows and has a cow sanctuary. Cowches provide income for cow upkeep. It's quite a story.
And they're great looking cowches.

a ferret

I'm surprised I never took a moment to check out deviantART before. For those of you, like me, who might be quite new to it, deviantART is a large online art community. By the look of it pretty much anybody who so wishes can be a member, and that is terrific, I think. Reminds me of the Last Thursdays Artwalk in the Alberta district of Portland -- art largely by the people, for the people. Boy I miss that energy.

But I digress. What I wanted to point you to today is this vibrant ferret on red, a painting by a member of ~TheFerretClub on deviantArt. And what other ferrets might this club have produced? Go have some fun looking!

"what an awkward great cat that is!"

So Florence Nightingale thought her kitten might say of her. At the time, she was teaching the kitten to wash itself. Not a surprising behaviour for the woman who founded modern nursing practice; what may surprise you is that she had over 60 cats in her adult life. They provided her greatest solace and company in a life filled with illness and work.

Once returned from the Crimean War, Nightingale turned her powers to the standards and practices of nursing, for she'd seen many severely nasty things in the war hospitals, and women were still not thought quite proper if they cared for male patients. She changed much of that single-handedly, but the effort, and a lifelong illness acquired during the war, kept her largely homebound. She never married. Cats were just the thing: the more, the merrier, and she loved them deeply indeed.

Here's her tale of what she learned from a little kitten:

I learn a lesson of life from a little kitten of mine, one of two. The old cat
comes in and says, very cross, “I didn’t ask you in here, I like to have my
Missus to myself!” And then he runs at them. The bigger and handsomer kitten
runs away, but the littler one stands her ground, and when the old enemy comes
near enough kisses his nose, and makes peace. That is the lesson of life, to
kiss one’s enemy’s nose, always standing one’s ground.

A charming page with two articles upon this subject here.