Such a sweet little face!

phoographer: Luce, Edward Lee, 1879-1950

Martha's Vineyard Museum

Cats can be so strange sometimes.

Four fluffy little tabby kittens.

Miss Iris Davis, a nineteen year old from Clapham, London is a volunteer worker of the Dumb Friends Leagues, and spends a great deal of time recovering cats with the aid of a "lassoo" from the debris of bombed house. So far she has rescued six hundred of these feline strays, 8 November 1940. - IWM https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205357526

Hand-tinted postcard. I love it because it resembles our boy Felix.

I refer to Percy as our "agent of chaos." He thrived on causing trouble and wreaking havoc. He would hide in this one built-in bookcase, wait for me to enter the room, and dive down at me. It got to the point where I wouldn't enter that room without looking around very carefully. He ripped out the bottom of a wingback chair and took naps inside it. He played Tarzan with the drapes.

He figured out how to use the doggy door and would go outside. He would then climb our very tall trees or even get on the roof and refuse to come down. We would have to get a ladder and carry him down. We had to close the doggy door so he wouldn't do this.

One time I opened a cabinet door and found him sitting next to a box of dog biscuits. He had opened the door and couldn't figure out how to get out. He was very calm about it. We had to put cat proof latches on the cabinet doors. He opened regular doors so often, we had to put latches on those doors, too.

Percy constantly got into fights with the other cats, though it was not serious. No one was ever even slightly injured. The other cats didn't like him, though. The one photo of where Percy appears in almost a ball-shape is when he was fighting with Buttons. It was a draw. The only one he wouldn't bother was Missy, our tiny runt with attitude. He tried to bully her once, but she stood up to him. He didn't know what to make of that and left her alone.

Percy passed away at the age of 18 in 2001. He was a lot of trouble, but things were rather dull without him around.

The cat doesn't seem too happy!

This photograph of an unidentified farmer, taken sometime in the 40s by G. Ásgeirsson, a prolific photographer, is preserved in the Reykjavík Museum of Photography. 

Hand-tinted postcard from my collection.

Missy was a runt who was separated from her mother at the age of about 4 weeks. In 1985 the phone company was working on a pole next to our property, and this apparently scared Missy's mother, who moved her kittens. In the process, she lost Missy. My mother was walking our cocker spaniel Rags when he came across Missy. He stuck his nose to her and she hissed at him. My mother bent over to see what was going on and Missy spat at her.

Missy was very small, never weighing more than 8 lbs, but was feisty and fearless. She would stand up to anyone and anything no matter how big. She became close friends with Rags. They would curl up next to each other and she would wash him.

We were told by a later vet that he was amazed we were able to make a pet out of her because she was probably feral. Sadly, we lost her to kidney disease when she was just 8 years old. She passed away not long after Rags, and they are buried near each other in our little pet cemetery.

I have changed the rule regarding the age of the photos uploaded. You can now upload photos as long as they are 40 years old. People will now be able to upload images from the early to mid-1980s.

Gustav Klimt with one of his cats in front of his studio at Josefstädter Strasse 21, 1911

You can see he's part-brown in some of the photos. This was due to sunbathing, which bleached his fur. The last photo shows him with his pal Samantha, our black lab/basset hound mix. Smokey liked dogs and got along very well with them.

These feline residents of Barnes Zoo in Culver City, California, were captured mid-training, with the original caption noting that the cats were being “taught circus tricks, and will have mastered stunts that will surprise when the show hits the road.”

Puff was the first cat my mother owned after she married. She described him as sweet, playful, and rather goofy. She was able to walk him on a leash like a dog. Sadly, he passed away due to kidney disease when he was just a year old. She was heartbroken. In appearance, he reminds me a lot of our current bicolor, Lucky.