thundercat loves his cat

thanks pixabay. (PD).  this is not thundercat's cat tron

Thundercat (Stephen Bruner, born 1984) is a bass guitarist, singer and producer from L.A. who won my ears and my heart around this time last year with the staggering video for Them Changes.   His new album "Drunk" is out right now.  Among its funk glories, "Drunk" includes "A Fan's Mail (Tron Song Suite II)."

. . . No one watching over me

I do what I want

Everybody wants to be a cat . . .

"Tron" would be Turbo Tron over 9000 baby Jesus Sally, and Thundercat loves him very much.  Here's the link to A Fan's Mail.

a cat is "an idol of the market place"

thanks reusableart.com

I couldn't pass up the chance to share this curious treat:  another poem found in Coal and Candlelight and Other Verses.

AN IDOL OF THE MARKET PLACE
Decorum and the butcher's cat
Are seldom far apart
From dawn when clouds surmount the air,
Piled like a beauty's powdered hair,
Till dusk, when down the misty square
Rumbles the latest cart

He sits in coat of white and grey
Where the rude cleaver's shock
Horrid from time to time descends,
And his imposing presence lends.
Grace to a platform that extends
Beneath the chopping-block. 

How tranquil are his close-piled cheeks,
His paws, sequestered warm!
An oak-grained panel backs his head
And all the stock-in-trade is spread,
A symphony in white and red,
Round his harmonious form.

The butcher's brave cerulean garb
Flutters before his face,
The cleaver dints his little roof
Of furrowed wood; remote, aloof,
He sits superb and panic proof
In his accustomed place. 

Threading the columned County Hall,
Midmost before his eyes,
Alerter dog and loitering maid
Cross from the sunlight to the shade,

And small amenities of trade
Under the gables rise;

Cats of the town, a shameless crew,
Over the way he sees
Propitiate with lavish purr
An unresponsive customer,
Or, meek with sycophantic fur,
Caress the children's knees. 

But he, betrothed to etiquette,
Betrays nor head nor heart;
Lone as the Ark on Ararat,
A monument of fur and fat,
Decorum and the butcher's cat
Are seldom far apart.

-- Eden, H. Parry. (1918). Coal and candlelight and other verses. London: J. Lane. 52-54.

sir bat-ears, the dog of the poor

From a slim volume of verse dated 1918, a gentle story of a dog who gives his patient love to the old folks living in the care of the parish.

Sir Bat-Ears
Sir Bat-Ears was a dog of birth
- And bred in Aberdeen,
But he favoured not his noble kin
And so his lot is mean,
And Sir Bat-ears sits by the alms-houses
On the stones with grass between.

Under the ancient archway
His pleasure is to wait
Between the two stone pine-apples
That flank the weathered gate;

And old, old alms-persons go by,
All rusty, bent and black
“Good day, good day, Sir Bat-ears!”
They say and stroke his back.

And old, old alms-persons go by,
Shaking and wellnigh dead,
“Good night, good night, Sir Bat-ears!"
They say and pat his head.

So courted and considered
He sits out hour by hour,
Benignant in the sunshine
And prudent in the shower.

(Nay, stoutly can he stand a storm
And stiffly breast the rain,
That rising when the cloud is gone
He leaves a circle of dry stone
Whereon to sit again.)

A dozen little door-steps
Under the arch are seen,
A dozen aged alms-persons
To keep them bright and clean;

Two wrinkled hands to scour each step
With a square of yellow stone—-
But print-marks of Sir Bat-ears' paws
Bespeckle every one.

And little eats an alms-person,
But, though his board be bare,
There never lacks a bone of the best
To be Sir Bats-ears’ share.

Mendicant muzzle and shrewd nose,
He quests from door to door;
Their grace they say, his shadow grey
Is instant on the floor—
Humblest of all the dogs there be,
A pensioner of the poor.

-- Eden, H. Parry. (1918). Coal and candlelight and other verses. London: J. Lane. 15-18.

vintage wordless wednesday

thanks ampersand

2 young ones

www.metmuseum.org. Rogers Fund, 1913

Puppies and babies: best buddies since time immemorial, or at least in this case since sometime in the 1st century BC to the 2nd century AD.  The Met has this little bronze as "Greek or Roman," and it's true that during that stretch of time the two cultures were interleaving to a deep extent.  The realism and warmth you see here is as fresh as anything you might create today.  In fact, I'm surprised at how pudgy and winsome the unknown artist managed to make that puppy, since "cute" is not the first adjective generally springing to mind when one thinks about the Greco-Romans.

a cymbal-ic cat

Book of Hours, Cat beating cymbal,
from a marginal cycle of images of the funeral of Renard the Fox,
Walters Manuscript W.102, fol. 78v detail

This whiskery fellow chimes his way along a margin in a Book of Hours held by the Walters Art Museum.  On adjoining pages, other creatures also march along in character, and all together they become a fanciful funeral procession for Reynard the Fox.  The book, dating from late 13th-century England, is neither complete nor bound correctly, and as a result it's not known which prosperous soul got to enjoy this jolly embellishment to their devotions.
Here's the entire page if you'd like to spot our cymbalist above.
Here's one of his fellows, a dog with a set of bagpipes made out of...is that what I think it is?
Here's the whole book page by page if you're curious and want to find more!

a timeless rabbit

Gift of Charles Lang Freer F1904.203a-b (noncommercial use permitted, the Freer and Sackler Galleries)

I couldn't resist sharing this clever creature.  Any guesses when it was made?  I thought at first glance it was a contemporary craft item, but no - it's from the mid-17th century.  This streamlined, ear-enhanced bun is an incense holder bearing the namestamp of the master of Japanese Kyoto ware, Nonomura Ninsei (active 1646-1677).  Kyoto ware are high-fired ceramics and porcelain created in that city, glazed in enamels and made to be used domestically.  Ninsei, unlike domestic ceramic artists before him, used thick monochrome enamel glaze on stoneware, and signed his work.  Of particular note in his tea bowls is the neat skill of their feet, the round projections on which they sit; not something you see in this incense holder, but I am still impressed by those dainty rabbit paws.
Learn more about Nonomura Ninsei here.

neko face

Gift of Charles Lang Freer (noncommercial use permitted, the Freer and Sackler Galleries)

Here we have the incomparable Hokusai (Japan, 1760-1849) with a little sketch he dashed off in ink on paper around 1810.  This is a work that would fall under the style of ukiyo-e, that is, focusing on the actors, entertainers and courtesans of the cities.  Every so often, one finds a cat (neko in Japanese) co-starring, as with our smug buddy below:

Head over to this site for a thorough look online at Hokusai's life and work.

vintage wordless wednesday

thanks ampersand

be our valentine

thanks vintageimages.org  (PD)

Oh behave!

Happy Valentine's Day, Museum friends!

the one to watch: kedi

thanks pixabay. not from the documentary

Of course I'm going to find a way to watch "Kedi"!
I read that Istanbul's street cats number in the hundreds of thousands (and here I thought Rome's population was lavish).  How can you live and work in a city full of independent, proud creatures and not have them affect your day?  You can't.  Director Ceyda Torun knows this first hand and makes it clear in "Kedi," her documentary on the ferals of Istanbul.
Kedi's website is here.  (Complete with trailer.)
The RogerEbert.com review of Kedi is here.

fable: the eagle, the cat, and the sow

british library (PD)

In this fable, found in a collection dated 1818, a cat tells some very wicked lies.  

***

THE EAGLE, THE CAT, AND THE SOW.
An Eagle had built her nest upon the top branches  of an old oak; a Wild Cat inhabited a hole in the middle; and in the hollow part at the bottom was a Sow with a whole litter of Pigs. A happy neighbourhood, and might long have continued so, had it not been for  the wicked insinuations of the designing Cat: for first of all, up she crept to the Eagle, and, Good neighbour, says she, we shall all be undone; that filthy Sow yonder does nothing but lie rooting at the foot of the tree, and, as I suspect, intends to grub it up, that she may the more easily come at our young ones. For my part, I will take care of my own concerns, you may do as you please; but I will watch her motions, though I stay at home this month for it. When she had said this, which could not fail of putting the Eagle into a great fright, down she went, and made a visit to the Sow at the bottom: putting on a sorrowful face, I hope, says she, you do not intend to go abroad to-day: why not? says the Sow: nay, replies the other, you may do as you please, but I overheard the Eagle tell her young ones, that she would treat them with a Pig the first time she saw you go out; and I am not sure but she may take up with a Kitten in the mean time; so good morrow to you, you will excuse me, I must go and take care of the little folks at home. Away she went accordingly, and by contriving to steal out softly at nights for her prey, and to stand watching and peeping all day at her hole, as under great concern, she made such an impression upon the Eagle and the Sow, that neither of them dared to venture abroad, for fear of the other; the consequence of which was, that they in a little time were starved, and their young ones fell a prey to the treacherous Cat and her Kittens.

APPLICATION.
This shews us the ill consequence of giving ear to a gossiping double-tongued neighbour. Many sociable well-disposed families have been blown up into a perpetual discord, by one of these wicked go-betweens; so that whoever would avoid the imputation of being a bad neighbour, should guard both against receiving ill impressions by hearsay, and uttering his opinions of others, to those busy bodies, who, to gratify a malignant disposition, or gain some selfish end of their own, can magnify a gnat to the size of a camel, or swell a mole-hill to a mountain.

--from Bewick, T., Aesop., . (1818). The fables of Aesop, and others. Newcastle: Printed by E. Walker for T. Bewick and son. Sold by them, Longman and Co. London, and all booksellers. 39-40

deux chats

Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Estampes et photographie, FOL-EF-449 (PD)

Here's the French engraver Prosper-Alphonse Isaac (1858-1924) with an elegant pair of creatures.   After years mastering and producing dry point, aquatint and other Western methods, Isaac turned to Japanese wood-engraving technique.  These cats are from that period, dating roughly 1908-1912.  Japanese woodprints used waterbased inks, which had fresh, vivid ranges of color; you can see that here even in the simple lines.
For the fun of it, I found this 1898 text on Japanese wood engravings. It's full of illustrations, even if you don't want to slog through the text.  Have a flip through it.

vintage wordless wednesday

thanks ampersand

a precious beggar

The Jack and Belle Linsky Collection, 1982 (The Metropolitan Museum of Art CC0 1.0)

Once upon a time, someone with a sense of humor and a healthy income had this pearly mooch for a pendant. Its design and craft has been attributed to a Spanish goldsmith working around 1580 to 1590, a late Renaissance piece, when pendants were a very popular form of jewelry.  Here's a pretty good page on this subject.

rorarora

"...to purr as a cat: rorarora."
This perfectly onomotopoeic (= a word that sounds just like its action) word comes from a language once called Secwana.  I found it in a dictionary old enough to call it that and not the present-day Tswana. Tswana is a Bantu language spoken by about 5 million people in southern Africa.
A language's words can paint a vivid picture of its speakers' interaction with their world.  To this end, I went looking for Tswana words about their animal companions.  Here are some more.

to scratch as a cat: napa.
A dog, as distinguished from a bitch, seheke; 

a lean, starved dog, mokgara; 

an old and poor dog, motau; 

a wild dog, leteane, lekanyana, letlhalerwa; 

to scratch a hole, as a dog, hata; 

a sleeping place of a dog, or a hole scratched in the ground, kutla;
to snap at, as a dog, kgogogela;
to be angry, as a dog, tlhonya;
to doctor a dog so as to make it fierce, galodisa; 

the medicine for making a dog fierce, kgalola; 

a dog's lying-in place, serubi; 

a little dog, ncana;
the dog is angry, nca e tlhontse. 

 - Brown, J. Tom d. 1925. (1895). Secwana dictionary: Secwana-English and English-Secwana. Frome [Eng.]: printed for the London Missionary Society by Butler & Tanner. Passim.

a couple of pet epigrams from the ancient greeks

thanks pixabay  (CC0 PD)

The following are translations from ancient Greek of various epigrams (brief poems inscribed on grave markers or votive offerings).

55
On a Maltese Watch-Dog
Here the stone says it holds the white dog from Melita, the most
faithful guardian of Eumelus; Bull they called him while he was
yet alive; but now his voice is prisoned in the silent pathways
of night.

56
On a Tame Partridge
No longer, poor partridge migrated from the rocks, does thy
woven house hold thee in its thin withies, nor under the sparkle
of fresh-faced Dawn dost thou ruffle up the edges of thy basking
wings; the cat bit off thy head, but the rest of thee I snatched
away, and she did not fill her greedy jaw; and now may the earth
cover thee not lightly but heavily, lest she drag out thy remains.

This next one I believe we've seen before at the Museum, but its beauty merits another visit.

57
On a Thessalian Hound
Surely even as thou hast dead in this tomb I deem the wild
beasts yet fear thy white bones, huntress Lycas; and thy valour
great Pelion knows, and splendid Ossa and the lonely peaks of
Cithaeron.

- from Mackail, J. W. (John William). (1890). Select epigrams from the Greek anthology. London: Longmans, Green, and Co. Passim.

vintage wordless wednesday

thanks ampersand