Category:
Cats
This sounds like it could have been the start of a horror movie. The feline version of
The Birds perhaps.
Source: San Francisco Call - May 26, 1890. via
WSIHN
"Meow Mansion" is a large gingerbread house with a serious message — neuter your cat!
The house, created by artist Kazz Morohashi, is home to (gingerbread) Kitty and Boots and their 65 kittens. But since Kitty and Boots haven't been neutered, their family just keeps growing and growing. Next year it'll be up to 300. And by 2017 up to 11,000.
Which raises the question: how exactly does one neuter a gingerbread cat? [via
edp24 and
flickr]
BusinessWeek has ranked Kitty Litter at #73 in its list of the "85 most disruptive ideas in our history." It notes that the idea to market clay as cat litter, which happened in 1947, "meant that after millennia of scratching at the door cats could come indoors and stay there. They had long been visitors in American homes; now they were residents. In some ways it has been a hostile takeover: There are millions more cats than dogs in the U.S."
I had never thought of cat litter as a disruptive idea before. But yeah, I can definitely see the part about the hostile takeover, as I've been a victim of that takeover, enslaved to the whims of a cat.
Nipper, cat owned by Dorothy Brinn, likes to eat his corn in comfort. His mistress fixed up this skewer and Nipper uses it for about two ears a day. The cat, a corn addict since his kitten days, likes it best with butter.
Toledo Blade - July 12, 1951
From an AP story that circulated in August 1951 (
example here):
PORTLAND, Ore. — This cat made such a pest of herself when Ted Matson tried to play table tennis that he finally put her on one side of the net and let her try the game on her own. That was six years ago, and the cat, Dagwood, has been playing ever since. She's adept at both the two-handed smash and the one-handed volley.
This cat was obviously born before her time. In the age of YouTube she would have been a global celebrity.
Update: Thanks to mindful webworker who found a video of Dagwood on YouTube. And as Cezar noted, it seems that Dagwood appeared on an episode of MASH. So I guess she kinda was a global celebrity.
November 12, 1951: As British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden was delivering an address at a meeting of the General Assembly of the U.N. in Paris, urging calm in Europe, a black cat suddenly got up on the stage and strolled across it, without a care in the world. This prompted discussion in the media as to whether the cat was a sign of good or bad luck. It was finally agreed to be a sign of good luck since a black cat in France is apparently a good omen (which I didn't know).
I think most political speeches would be greatly improved if cats randomly wandered across the stage during them.
Iowa City Press-Citizen - Nov 12, 1951
The Kokomo Tribune - Nov 20, 1951
Maybe Chuck has deemed "animals inherit estate" stories NO LONGER WEIRD. But such was not the case in 1966.
Original article here.
I can't imagine a cat ever using this cat exercise wheel (apart from the one cat in the video whom they've somehow convinced to demonstrate it). And yet, the creators of this have not only met their funding goal on Kickstarter but
have gone well over it.
And in other unusual cat products, here's a cat feeder that uses "cat facial recognition technology" while dispensing the food so that, if you have multiple cats, you can make sure each one gets the proper amount. No more, no less.
In 1937, the
Journal of Heredity (vol 28, no. 3). published an article about an unusual kitten that looked very much like a dog. The kitten was called "Nonesuch."
this little animal — now about two months old — is about the queerest looking creature one could hope to set eyes upon. Its face is that of a black, white, and yellow spotted dog. Its ears are quite long and sharp-pointed. It has the short whiskers of a puppy. The hind legs are amusingly bowed. It has a stub tail. What makes the nonesuch even more unusual appearing is the short smooth dog hair all over its cat-like body.
From the very moment of its birth, which was about twelve hours after the rest of the litter, the nonesuch was surprisingly independent in its actions. It was born with its eyes open, and was able to crawl a little — two characteristics quite unknown to new-born kittens.
The nonesuch acts both like a cat and a dog. While it makes a noise like a cat, it sniffs its food like a dog. Nothing delights the nonesuch more than gnawing a bone in a very dog-like manner.
However, although Nonesuch looked like a dog, she was definitely a cat, which she proved by giving birth to a litter of kittens a year later.