a cat finds a strange shelter

Ireland, mid-nineteenth century:  a reverend's favorite cat seeks unexpected shelter in a vegetable.

***

Regarding the attachment of Cats to places, the following remarks of the late Rev. Caesar Otway, in his lecture on the Intellectuality of Domestic Animals before the Royal Zoological Society of Ireland, some years ago, deserve attention. 

"Of Cats," he says, "time does not allow me to say much, but this I must affirm, that they are misrepresented, and often the victims of prejudice. It is strictly maintained that they have little or no affection for persons, and that their partialities are confined to places. I have known many instances of the reverse. When leaving, about fifteen years ago, a glebe-house to remove into Dublin, the Cat that was a favourite with me, and with my children, was left behind, in our hurry. On seeing strange faces come into the house, she instantly left it, and took up her abode in the top of a large cabbage stalk, whose head had been cut off, but which retained a sufficient number of leaves to protect poor Puss from the weather. In this position she remained, and nothing could induce her to leave it, until I sent a special messenger to bring her to my house in town..."

***

From Charles Henry Ross, The book of cats: a chit-chat chronicle of feline facts and fancies, legendary, lyrical, medical, mirthful and miscellaneous (London: Griffith and Farran, 1868), p. 135.

dogs as medicine, in nottinghamshire

CURE FOR HOOPING COUGH.
Cut some hairs from the back of the head of the child having hooping cough, place them between two pieces of buttered bread, and give them to the first dog you meet.  If the dog eats it an immediate cure is effected, so it is believed.  This belief is still current in Nottingham.
* * *

Or at least it was in 1876 when the book Nottinghamshire Facts and Fictions was published by John Potter Briscoe (Nottingham: Shepherd Brothers).  You'll find this folk belief on page 66.

gottfried mind imagines a cat's worst nightmare

thanks wikimedia commons {PD:Old}

We've seen the work of "the Raphael of cats," Gottfried Mind (1768-1814) before here at the Museum. Mind was an outsider artist of Hungarian descent who was born and lived out his life in Bern, Switzerland.  He has been identified as autistic based on the descriptions that have come down to the present day: uncomfortable and gauche around human beings, but sweet and easy with domestic animals.You see this readily in "Cat in a Cage," probably a watercolor as are most of his works.  I'm torn on this piece:  it's definitely comic and shows off some wonderful observations of how mice would marvel, if they could, and the cat's bug-eyed irritation is funny as well.  However, I can't help but wonder if this is how Mind often felt - a cat imprisoned and mocked by inconsequential little animals.

and now on the cats' side

Only the student of history can fully appreciate the importance of cats. If we could know really the history of the civilizations of the world, we should undoubtedly find that cats have played an important part in it. Wherever pioneers have planted their crops, there have followed rats and mice in plenty to reap their harvest; therefore, no part of their household belongings was prized more by our forefathers than the domestic cat. Indeed, the cat is still a great factor in keeping in check rats and mice. Our government appropriates money every year to support cats in the postoffices and other public buildings; and now in Pittsburg our national government is attempting to develop a strain of cats that can endure life in cold storage warehouses (wait, what? - Curator). Thus we can see that the story of Dick Whittington reveals to us, better than most written histories, the value of a cat in a country overrun with vermin. In Dick Whittington's time a cat was indeed worth its weight in gold.

     -- Opening paragraph of the chapter on "The Cat," from Anna Botsford Comstock, The Pet Book (Ithaca NY: The Comstock Publishing Company, 2nd ed., 1915) p. 21.

53 cats for 53 stations

thanks wikimedia commons {{PD:US}}

Cat lover Utagawa Kuniyoshi (Japanese;1798-1861) created this cute take on Hiroshige's print series The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tokaido.  Here we'll find...if we know how!...kitty shorthand for the 53 rest locations along the coastal highway between Tokyo and Kyoto.  Can't see the kitties well?  Look here.  An interactive tour of the Tokaido route is here. 
It seems the cats are nicknamed and themed after puns on the station names.  I tried and tried to find a list, but no dice (if you find one, I'd love to see it).  Meanwhile, can you find...
 - a white cat with black spots, running off with a blue fish
 - a calico holding a red and white kerchief
 - ...and another calico with the same kind of kerchief on its head
 - a marmalade cat on a gray, flowered cushion
Bonus! Can you spot the cat who has three mice behind him doing some kind of "booga booga" dance?

maeterlinck: more on the dog (not for cat lovers!)

More from Maurice Maeterlinck's My Dog.  In this selection he muses on how (he thinks) dogs are the only other part of creation to develop the linkage of affection with humans.  No other animal comes off so well in comparison, but his take on cats is too funny.  (And wrong!  Says me.)
***
Man loves the dog, but how much more ought he to love it, if he considered, in the inflexible harmony of the laws of nature, the sole exception, which is that love which succeeds in piercing, in order to draw closer to us, the partitions, every elsewhere impermeable, that separate the species.  We are alone, absolutely alone, on this chance planet; and, amid all the forms of life that surround us, not one, excepting the dog, has made an alliance with us. . .
Among the animals, we number a few servants who have submitted only through indifference, cowardice or stupidity: the uncertain and craven horse, who responds only to pain and is attached to nothing; the passive and dejected ass, who stays with us only because he knows not what to do nor where to go, but who, nevertheless, under the cudgel and the pack-saddle, retains the idea that lurks behind his ears; the cow and the ox, happy so long as they are eating, and docile because, for centuries, they have not had a thought of their own; the affrighted sheep, who knows no other master than terror; the hen, who is faithful to the poultry-yard, because she finds more maize and wheat there than in the neighbouring forest. 


I do not speak of the cat, to whom we are nothing more than a too large and uneatable prey: the ferocious cat, whose sidelong contempt tolerates us only as encumbering parasites in our own homes. She, at least, curses us in her mysterious heart; but all the others live beside us as they might live beside a rock or a tree. They do not love us, do not know us, scarcely notice us. They are unaware of our life, our death, our departure, our return, our sadness, our joy, our smile. They do not even hear the sound of our voice, so soon as it no longer threatens them; and, when they look at us, it is with the distrustful bewilderment of the horse, in whose eye still hovers the infatuation of the elk or gazelle that sees us for the first time, or with the dull stupor of the ruminants, who look upon us as a momentary and useless accident of the pasture.

***

Pages 40-45, the 1906 G. Allen edition.

bloggers unite for dog rescue

thanks wikipaintings.org {PD}

I understand from MyBrownNewfies.com that today is "Bloggers Unite for Dog Rescue" day (July 23 2012).  In honor of dogs having a safe place to sleep and a sweet life, here's Gerrit Dou's 1650 oil on panel, Sleeping Dog with Terracotta Pot.  Except when you get a chance to see this painting in a bigger size, you see the little guy isn't really sleeping.  His eyes are heavy, but open enough to spot anything bothersome.  This makes me think this dog must not have belonged to Dou.  I wonder who he is and where he went afterwards.

on the road vintage photo time: home again

ampersand

Spot the wiener dog.  Just the dog, now.
I'm home again after a wonderful trip.  Here are some of the things I saw for the very first time:  the Southern Oregon coast; California's Humboldt County, including the Avenue of the Giants and (the giftshop of) the Trees of Mystery; Carmel (no, I did not spot Mr. Eastwood); the Monterey Bay Aquarium; 17-Mile Drive;
and Crater Lake!  But it's good to be home in the damp Northwest, doing about 5 loads of wash, getting back to regularly scheduled blogging.

on the road vintage photo time 4

ampersand

(Still at Grandma's, where I've met new four footed relatives thanks to the aunts'n'uncles)
Perhaps this one is a bit grim but it is fascinating.  Did you see the cat right away?  Its spotty fur made excellent camoflauge for its own version of the jungle.

on the road vintage photo time 3

ampersand

Aw.  Just aw.  What a good chocolate lab.  (Updated from my grandma's house in the Gold Rush country. )

on the road vintage photo time 2

ampersand

(As I edit this on the road, I am in Plumes coffee house in Monterey, CA, listening to the Doors' "Riders on the Storm.")  Here's a bunch of happy funsters at Kelly Butte, 1933-34.  And their collective dog.  Where's Kelly Butte?

on the road vintage photo time 1

ampersand

Hi everybody!  Having a great time, but I miss Elizabeth and Veronica.  Here's one of the photos I got ready to share while away.  There have been some excellent finds meanwhile...you'll love them when I can get them scanned.  So about this one - I wonder if this was taken around the same time as the photo of the pretty girl with the husky?

curator hits road, you get vintage photo time

bow down before ampersand and its bulk bin

I know, that's not really an animal, but that is "Hank's sister Gertrude."  Or so says the note on the back.  I bet Gertrude's on vacation.  Me too, starting tomorrow, for just over a week!  So I won't be posting every single day, but when I can I'll post a Vintage Photo Time.  Stay tuned!

a dog frames the family cat

[Nov. 2, 1872.]
Our terrier Crib took upon himself yesterday to add his testimony to your view of "dog-consciousness," as expressed in the Spectator of the 19th ult. Crib verges on perfection, save that he is frantically jealous of any other animal who may receive attention, but yesterday he rebelled against the injustice of being compelled to eat all his dinner, and refused to swallow one special piece of bread; but finding that his refusal was not accepted, apparently made a virtue of necessity, and gulped down the bread with a look and wag of the tail, giving me to understand that I ought to be satisfied, which I was not, as I observed a slight swelling in one cheek. So concealing my suspicion I furtively watched. Crib also occasionally eyed me, lying down and then walking round the room, and sniffing in the corners, as he is wont to do. In a few minutes, and when I appeared safely absorbed in my paper, he made his way slowly to where pussy was lapping her saucer of milk; passing her without stopping, he cleverly discharged the hated mouthful into pussy's milk, and continuing his walk to the rug, laid himself down and slept the sleep of the just. -- C. S.

-- From Dog stories from the "Spectator": being anecdotes of the intelligence, reasoning power, affection and sympathy of dogs, selected from the correspondence columms of "The Spectator."   (New York: Macmillan and Co., 1985) pp. 226-7.

a leisurely look back at cats in history

Summer has come at last to our sticky corner of the Pacific NW.  Today it will be sunny and 81 degrees.  The waterfront beckons, Elizabeth kitty yells to go outside for her supervised short trip to the back lawn, and last but not least a neat stack of work remains for me to complete by Monday.  
But I did find a couple of neat things to share with you regarding cats and their history.  The first, a Smithsonian article from 2007, tells us that scientists now think the house cat may have been hanging with us for 12,000 years.  Read A Brief History of House Cats.
The second, in the Vintage Photo Time vein, is a post at BuzzFeed:  "Cats in History," with a great collection of photos from the 1800s and 1990s.  You'll have seen a couple of these before, but mostly they're new to the Museum, and what's more there's a picture of a fistful of baby leopards!  Or cheetahs.  They're pretty tiny.  Hard to tell.  You go look.

a distinguished dog

thanks wikimedia commons {PD}

Sir Edwin Henry Landseer (1802-1873):  now there's the inescapable artist of Victorian Britain.  Seen the big lions around Nelson's Column in London?  That's him.  Most any painting of Queen Victoria's family and pets?  Probably him.  Mighty Scottish stags in the grand Highlands? Ditto.  And it's easy to shrug that off if you don't much care for 19th century Romanticism, but Landseer really was good.  I'm not only talking about the high technical quality of his work.  You can't escape that.  After all, look at the sheen and ruffle of the fur on this fellow in 1838's A Distinguished Member of the Humane Society.  But take a moment to call up any slideshow of Landseer's work, and though you'll see a lot of broad appeals to sentiment, you will also see a feeling for the creatures he paints.
I think he particularly cared for dogs, whom he paints with appreciation for all their varied characters. There's a piece portraying the Princess Royal in her cradle, with Prince Albert's greyhound Eos tucking her head between the plump baby's feet. You need to be possessed of a certain kind of sensitivity to pull that off well.  As it happens, with all his success and genius, Landseer suffered from melancholy and depression for much of his life.  I can't help but wonder if that was the result of a tender disposition forced to battle with his society's expectations of an up-and-coming man.

animals through many eyes

This morning I'm sending you to another blog I've just discovered and don't know how I ever lived without:

Animalarium

Animalarium's blogger, Laura O., notes in her blogbio "Ever since I can remember, I have been fascinated by strange and beautiful things. I enjoy sharing my love of animals, art, graphic design and illustrated books."  And share she does, in a truly rich and generous outpouring of all animals, envisioned all types of ways - wherever does she find the time? But I'm so glad she does.  Do a search for cats like I did here.   Find her tag for bunnies and hares and see that search.  Or whatever, look up gazelles and see what you get.  I wish I could sit here all day and look at this blog.

bulldog dustbin delight

image and text in public domain

From a 1906 translation of Maurice Maeterlink's fond story about/to his bulldog puppy, My Dog.  Illustration is by G. Vernon Stokes.  I'll be sharing more snippets of this book, so stay tuned.

"general hamley and his cats"

Edward Bruce Hamley (British, 1824-1893) was an Army general, a writer, and a Conservative politician.  Not as a whole the sort of lineup that makes for a kitty enthusiast, but as it turns out he very much was.  Here's a short article from a periodical of his time called The Review of Reviews (1893 vol. 8, p. 271) recalling this with fondness:

* * *

GENERAL HAMLEY AND HIS CATS.

The writer of a very appreciative character sketch of General Hamley in Blackwood's Magazine contains a passage of more than general interest. Many people knew General Hamley, no doubt, but the number that knew him were but as a drop in a bucket compared with the number of those who know cats, aud who will be more attracted to the departed soldier on account of his affection for these household pets than for the part which he took in storming the earthworks at Tel-el-Kebir. The writer says:—

No account of General Hamley would do him justice which did not allude to his affection for cats. The cat in effigy, or ID water-colours or crayons, was as common on the tables and walls in his rooms as the bears about Berne. Cats in all characters and situations were showered on him in Christmas cards by ladies who flattered that amiable weakness. He was hand-in-glove with all the cats at the clubs, whether, as he said, they were regular or merely honorary members. He lived on terms of daily familiarity with the cat who used to reside in a hutch behind the "United Service." As he walked home in the peaceful night by lamplight he could never pass a cat on a door-step without stooping to scratch it. In his most earnest talk at one of the windows in the Athenaeum dining-room, he would stop himself and lay his hand on your arm, if he saw one of his feline friends stretching itself and polishing its claws tiger - like against the trunk of a tree. We remember at one of the annual Saturday Review dinners at Greenwich, by an odd coincidence, four men chanced to be seated together, all devoted to cats. Two of them had written monographs on the noble animal, but Hamley was the most enthusiastic of the four. We have seldom heard him in greater verve or force as he illustrated his psychological analysis of the qualities and virtues of his favourites with a flow of anecdotes and recollections. One of these he gave in the letter in "The Story of the Campaign:"  On the march from the Alma to the Katcha, "I carried a small black kitten, which one of our people picked up on the bank of the river, on my holsters for some time, feeding him with biscuits, but during my absence from the saddle he made off." What a pleasing trait that is in his character!

* * *

You can learn more about General Edward Bruce Hamley here.