EZ Nabber Cat Grabber

"perfect for catching the unruly feline." Available for purchase from Campbell Pet Company.




via What They Think

Posted By: Alex - Thu Sep 21, 2023 - Comments (4)
Category: Inventions, Cats

Automatic Cat Litter Box—Under Cat’s Control

I detect one small flaw in this concept, hidden in the phrase "the cat is trained..."

Full patent here.

Posted By: Paul - Sun Sep 10, 2023 - Comments ()
Category: Patents, Excrement, Cats, 1960s

Tasty Human Flavor

While buying food for my cat, I noticed that the Temptations treats he loves now come in a new flavor: Tasty Human.

So it's like Soylent Green as cat food?

I suppose this will give him a taste for human flesh, which will make it even more likely that he'll eat me should I drop dead in the house.

Posted By: Alex - Wed Sep 06, 2023 - Comments (6)
Category: Food, Cats

Stealing a Dinner

Posted By: Paul - Sat Oct 15, 2022 - Comments (2)
Category: Death, Food, Cats, Dogs, 1900s, Weapons

Follies of the Madmen #539

Source: Times Colonist (Victoria, British Columbia, Canada)29 Feb 1956, Wed Page 13

It's worth taking a look at the other more-legible images after the jump.








More in extended >>

Posted By: Paul - Mon Aug 08, 2022 - Comments (1)
Category: Fashion, Advertising, Cats, Dogs, North America, Mental Health and Insanity

The Amazing Acro-Cats

Posted By: Paul - Fri Aug 05, 2022 - Comments (1)
Category: Entertainment, Freaks, Oddities, Quirks of Nature, Cats

Artwork Khrushchev Probably Would Not Have Liked 45

Karl Hubbuch 1881-1979 "Dialog (Myriam with cat)" c 1953

The artist's Wikipedia page.

Posted By: Paul - Wed Aug 03, 2022 - Comments ()
Category: Art, Beauty, Ugliness and Other Aesthetic Issues, Cats, 1950s

Petrarch’s Cat

If you make a visit to Italy and visit the museum-home of the author Petrarch, you will get to see the mummified body of his adored cat.

Or so the legend goes. Actually, the cat corpse is a mere four hundred years old, created by the person who owned the house in the 1600s.

Read about it here.

Posted By: Paul - Sun Jun 12, 2022 - Comments ()
Category: Hoaxes and Imposters and Imitators, Historical Figure, Cats, Europe

The Health Dangers of Sleeping on a Hartmann Line

My Great Aunt recently died at the age of 100. Throughout her life she was very much into alternative medicine, and she kept hundreds of newsletters from various alt-health practitioners. Most of them aren't particularly interesting, but while going through her stuff I've found a few oddities, such as a 1990 newsletter warning of the danger of sleeping on Hartmann Lines.

I'd never heard of Hartmann Lines. Wikipedia describes them as "a scientifically unproven grid of invisible energy lines of the Earth's inherent radiation".

But how to know if you're sleeping on a Hartmann line? Well, if you've got a cat and it likes to sleep in your bed, you may be in trouble because apparently cats love sleeping on Hartmann lines. (I'm in trouble!)

I've posted a few snippets from the newsletter below, and also uploaded the full newsletter as a pdf file.

Posted By: Alex - Tue May 24, 2022 - Comments (4)
Category: Health, Patent Medicines, Nostrums and Snake Oil, Cats

Cat Boxing

I wasn't aware that there was such a thing as cat boxing. Cats fight all the time, of course. But to box each other at a set time in front of a crowd — I didn't think they would cooperate with such an indignity.

Detroit Free Press - June 16, 1939

Update: Paul revealed to me the existence of this old video produced by Thomas Edison, circa 1894, showing cats boxing. So I guess cat boxing is a long-established thing.

Posted By: Alex - Thu Apr 14, 2022 - Comments (2)
Category: Sports, Martial Arts, Cats, 1930s