Roby Sweet's Blog, page 78

Theater Poster Cats: Naughty Anthony

Wordless Wednesday


Cats depicted in poster for Naughty Anthony, a farcical three-actcomedy written and produced by David Belasco (1853–1931).The play ran from January to March 1900 at theHerald Square Theatre, New York.Poster by Strobridge & Co., 1899.Via the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. A cat slips into a silk stocking in a posterfor Naughty Anthony, by David Belasco, c. 1900.Poster by Strobridge & Co., 1899.Via the Library of Congress Printsand Photographs Division.

Book Review: James the Connoisseur Cat, by Harriet Hahn

Miss Cuddlywumps reads the story of a truly classic cat

I, Miss Cuddlywumps, am making a slight departure from my usual routine of reviewing cat cozy mysteries, but this is a departure I am certain you will thank me for. My subject today is Harriet Hahn’s delightful James the Connoisseur Cat, first published in the 1990s (as far as I can tell) and recently released on Kindle.
This James is a cat like no other. He is a British shorthair who lives at the Baron’s Chambers apartments, where his “job” is to evaluate potential tenants and weed out the undesirables. Fortunately for us, he takes a particular liking to the story’s narrator, and soon enough the two are spending their evenings enjoying a single-malt whiskey together (do not try this at home, at least not with your cat) and embarking on various adventures.
James is what you might call a “great communicator.” He gets his point across by pointing his paws and nodding his head, and he shudders at the thought of killing a mouse. Oh, and when he wants someone to shut up, he puts his paw over their mouth (more cats should learn how to do this).
This big gray cat is so influential he soon has the narrator taking him out for shopping trips in a bag customized with eye holes. He picks out his favorite pâté (which he enjoys a little too much) and has many other adventures, including
falling in love with a porcelain cat that has a secretdrumming up art sales for a friendevaluating collectibles and identifying forgeriesacting, anddetecting.
She of Little Talent read this book with a constant smile on her face. It is packed with one amusing moment after another, and the writing is a joy to read, with the words A very enthusiastic

A Case of “Feline Telepathy,” or, Allergies Explained

Miss Cuddlywumps investigates a curious collision of ghosts, cats, and scientific inquiry  Today, dear readers, I draw your attention to a minor clash of world views that played out in the venerable pages of the journal Science in the mid-1880s.
It began in the issue of Friday, July 31, 1885, in a section titled “Comment and Criticism,” penned by Professor S. H. Scudder. The comment and criticism in this case involved the Theosophical Society, the American Society for Psychical Research, and the newly appointed censor of said research society. The writer referred to the censor, a Professor Elliott Coues, rather dismissively as a “well-known ghost-smeller” who claimed to have “seen, felt, heard, and smelled” various ghosts.
Professor Coues naturally took exception to the writer’s tone and responded in a letter to the editor that was published August 6, 1886. (Today, with Twitter, this incident would have played out much more quickly.) In his very enlightening response, Coues points out Scudder’s most remarkable ability to detect…cats.
Feline Telepathy Allergic, or telepathic?
Photo © Nikitu | Dreamstime.com- WomanWith Cat Allergy PhotoIt seems that the esteemed professor “[did] not require to see the cat, or hear the cat, or smell the cat, or taste the cat, or touch the cat” to know that a cat was present. He had only to feel that “painful affection of the respiratory passages” he suffered whenever a cat was near. This, Coues playfully contended, was clear evidence of Scudder’s telepathic bond with cats.
Coues went on to consider the possible source of such a remarkable phenomenon, writing,
What subtile connection there is between the anthropoid and the aeluroid organisms in this case, resulting in such violent antipathy and respiratory derangement on the one hand and such complacent sympathy or entire apathy on the other, is hard to say.
Perhaps the connection lay in the resemblance of asthmatic breathing to purring, Coues postulated. He doubted, though, that there was any actual mind-reading going on, for, while everyone knew exactly what Scudder thought of cats, no one could begin to guess what cats thought of Scudder.
In any case, Scudder’s undeniable connection to cats invariably resulted in a “psychic storm” within him, followed closely by a “physical derangement” familiar to allergy sufferers of every time and place. And that brings me to my conclusion, which is this:
Those who are allergic to cats should consider themselves fortunate to have such a close psychic bond with these most remarkable creatures.
Gesundheit!
Sources “Comment and Criticism.” Science, vol. 6 no. 130 (July 31, 1881), p. 81.
“Feline Telepathy.” Science, vol. 8 no. 183 (August 6, 1883), p. 124.

Medieval Manuscript Cats: Two Cats Hunting Mice

Wordless Wednesday

Detail of a miniature of two cats hunting mice.From a 13th-century bestiary, England.Public Domain, via theBritish Library Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts.

History’s First Black Cats

The original “cat” (F.s. lybica).So how did we get all those other colors? Well, we’re not going to tackle the whole story today (let’s just say it has to do with genetics, and probably with human taste in cats’ appearance). In this post we’re discussing only the first of the new colors to emerge from all those sandy-coated forbears, and that new color may well have been black.
Why do some cats have all-black coats, anyway? A modern black cat in Greece.Research suggests that black catsfirst appeared in the eastern Mediterranean in 500 BC or so.
The black coloring results from a genetic mutation that alters the pigmentation (color) in the individual hairs of a cat’s coat. The original domestic cats (and many still today) had an “agouti” type of coat. This means that each individual hair has a dark tip and a lighter color at the root.
Some cats, though, have a “non-agouti” mutation, in which the hairs do not have this pattern and are one solid color, usually black.
When did the first black cats appear?According to researchers, the non-agouti gene seems to have arisen in about 500 BC somewhere in the eastern Mediterranean, perhaps in Greece or Phoenicia (Engels, p. 85).
The first known mentionof black cats comes roughly one thousand years later, from a sixth-century AD medical writer called Aetius of Amida. Aetius wrote this about the influence of cats’ coat colors on human illness:
The excrement of sick cats provides plenty of causes for illnesses of the following types, depending on the cats’ coat varieties. A whitish coat produces a phlegmatic disorder, a blackish one a melancholic state, and a pale coat, a choleric one. (Engels, p. 75)
So we know for sure that there were black (and white) cats by the sixth century AD, and we can guess that they had probably been around a lot longer than that.
How did black cats spread from the eastern Mediterranean?The easy answer is that people took the cats to different places. A cat kept on a ship to combat rodents might hop off at a foreign port, for example. In any case, the more vexing question is who spread black cats out from the eastern Mediterranean?
This brings us back to the Phoenicians, a somewhat mysterious group who rose in the eastern Mediterranean in about 1100 BC and became the dominant traders in that region and beyond. Over the centuries, they established colonies in Italy, North Africa, and Spain, and they probably took cats with them; they may have even domesticated those cats from their own local wildcats, completely separately from the Egyptians (Bradshaw, p. 44).
You’ll recall now that researchers believe the non-agouti mutation of black cats got its start in the eastern Mediterranean, which is right where the Phoenicians were. Certainly some of the cats they took along to their various colonies were black. Perhaps not coincidentally, genetic mapping has shown that the highest concentrations of the non-agouti gene are found in northwest Africa … and central Britain (Engels, p. 85).
This raises a new question:
Did the Phoenicians bring (black) cats to Britain?Well, maybe. If the Phoenicians themselves actually reached Britain, then they certainly could have brought cats, including some black ones, along with them. Author John Bradshaw says that this is what happened, and he further speculates that the cats were a remedy the Phoenicians brought to control the mice they’d unintentionally introduced on earlier trading visits (p. 52).
But it could have happened another way.
That genetic mapping I mentioned earlier shows an area of non-agouti concentration that starts around Marseilles and stretches north right up to southern Britain. Marseilles used to be a Greek colony, so it is possible that the Greeks were actually responsible for introducing black cats (and others) to that colony, and further human movement up through France and to Britain helped spread the cats in that direction.
It could have even happened both ways, and we may never know for sure.
Regardless of how they eventually reached Britain and the world beyond, black cats certainly SourcesBradshaw, John. Cat Sense: How the New Feline Science Can Make You a Better Friend to Your Pet. New York: Basic Books, 2013.
Engels, Donald. Classical Cats: The Rise and Fall of the Sacred Cat. London: Routledge, 1999.
Tabor, Roger. Cats: The Rise of the Cat. London: BBC Books, 1991
For more on the colors of ancient cats, see  "Cats of Few Colors: Ancient Egyptian Felines Came in One Variety."

Cat in the Old Northwest

Wordless Wednesday
Old WayIn a Frank Palmer photo circa 1908, a cat perches on a log jutting out from a cabin while a woman works with a spinning wheel. Scene probably in Washington State. Via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

The Cat Lady Sleuth Strikes Again: Murder in Green Harbor

Miss Cuddlywumps reads Book 2 in the Cat Lady Sleuth series by Nancy C. Davis
Sometimes a cozy-mystery lover needs a quick, light read to help them through a winter’s day. Nancy C. Davis’s Cat Lady Sleuth series offers some nice stories to curl up with.
Murder in Green Harboris the second adventure of Deirdre and her cats, Flipper and Joe. Deirdre lives in Green Harbor, Maine, and is a librarian by day and an amateur sleuth in her spare time. As this book opens, we find Deirdre feeling the stress of a busy time at work. Clearly, this sleuth needs a mystery to solve so she can relax a little, and, conveniently enough, someone in Green Harbor is murdered.
Well, I should back up a little bit. Someone is missing, but we know from the title that this someone is more than likely also murdered.
The unfortunate victim is one Misty Hall, who stands (or stood, rather) to inherit the Brown’s Salt Water Taffy business. The question is, who would want to harm her? She was known to associate with at least one supposedly unsavory character, but would he want her dead, or is there something else going on?
Deirdre can’t help but get involved (over the local sheriff’s objections), which means that the tubby Flipper and tabby Joe also get involved. Well, Joe gets involved. Flipper’s attention is mostly taken up with the newest addition to the family, a little kitten named Clem. Little Clem makes himself useful right away, leading Deirdre straight to a clue. It takes the more experienced Joe, though, to actually catch the killer.
Really, one wonders how crimes would ever get solved without cats.
Murder in Green Harboris not a complex book, but it does have some depth to it (just how close can Deirdre let herself get to Sam, her love interest and good friend?) that helps make it a satisfying read. It also features some particularly nice fall imagery (golden light on red maples and sparkling waters) that was especially inviting—and comforting—on the frigid winter day when we read the book. There are a few distracting typos, and the addition of commas in several sentences would make for a smoother reading experience.


More by Nancy C. Davis: Deirdre the Cat Lady Sleuth

Domestic Cat Nursing Kittens, by Morikuni Tachibana

Wordless Wednesday
Domestic Cat Nursing Kittens1720 woodcut by Morikuni Tachibana (1679–1748),a Japanese artist of the Kano school.ViaLibrary of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Book Review: Meow If It’s Murder

Miss Cuddlywumps reviews the first Nick and Nora mystery by T. C. LoTempio
If you love cats and The Thin Man, then Meow If It’s Murderis just the book for you. It’s got all the usual cat-cozy ingredients—mystery, meddling amateur sleuth, brilliant feline—combined in a way that is just a delight to read. The story goes something like this:
One Lola Grainger, who was known to have an intense fear of water, has apparently drowned in a tragic yachting accident. At least that was the opinion reached in one of those open-and-shut cases that was shut a little too soon.
Fortunately for justice, one Nora Charles, a former crime reporter in Chicago, has just moved home to Cruz, California, to take over the family sandwich shop after her mother’s death. Nora is single, pushing forty, and though she insists she is highly practical-minded and not really a risk taker, she still has her reporter’s instinct for digging for the truth—even when the truth is dangerous. Good thing she has Nick, the dark, handsome stranger who saunters into her shop one day and proceeds to take over her life.
Nick, in case you’re wondering, is a stocky tuxedo cat who has certain talents. First, he is a great communicator, apparently able to understand and respond to whatever the people around him are talking about. (It’s so cute when humans are befuddled, as Nora is, by cats’ abilities.) Nick also has a thing for Scrabble tiles. He’s able to pull out a few pertinent letters to send Nora important messages, though it’s up to her to arrange them in the correct order—which she often fails to do. (Okay, even I am impressed by this ability—and by ability I mean Nick’s thing with the tiles, not Nora’s penchant for arranging them wrong.)
In trying to locate this confident cat’s owner, Nora discovers that said owner is a private detective looking into the Lola Grainger case on behalf of the deceased woman’s sister, Adrienne. Or perhaps I should say that the owner was a private detective: He’s been missing ever since he made a mysterious phone call to his partner saying he’d found a body he thought was Adrienne’s. It seems that Lola may not be the only deceased person in this case.
And so Nick and Nora are off on their first case, and it’s a good one, with one particularly nice twist that made us sit up and say, “Huh? You mean… What?” I love it when that happens. Nora calls on some of her old Chicago ties and soon finds herself in a very dangerous business, surrounded by people who may not be what they seem. I’ll say again, it’s a good thing she has Nick. Oh, and that bit about her not being a risk taker is a complete and total lie.
Meow If It’s Murder is a joy to read: well plotted, well written, and with touches of humor that are classic cozy (as when Nick makes a rude gesture at Nora for leaving him in the car). The story has enough complexity to keep a reader’s mind engaged, but it’s also clear enough that we were never befuddled. Thrown off balance in a delightful way, yes; confused, no. We just couldn’t find anything to complain about, and we look forward to the next adventure from A very enthusiastic

Why Dogs Chase Cats and Cats Chase Mice

A Ukrainian folktale retold, with slight embellishments, by Miss Cuddlywumps 
Many centuries ago, a king issued a decree that made it a crime for people to bother dogs. He presented this decree to the dogs themselves, which was a big mistake because, being dogs, they were not very bright and didn’t know what they should do with it.
Fortunately for them, there were some cats around who selflessly volunteered to store the decree in a safe place. The dogs handed the precious document over, and the cats went to great trouble to secret it away in one of those hidden little nooks that only cats can find or get into.
Everyone was happy until one spring day when some dogcatchers came along and started capturing supposedly innocent dogs and taking them away. The dogs protested and reminded the dogcatchers of their special decree. Wisely not taking the dogs at their word, the dogcatchers demanded to see the decree, and so the dogs ran to the cats and, without even saying please, told the cats to bring the paper out of hiding.
So the kind, helpful cats went off to find the cleverly hidden decree, but when they got to the hiding place, they discovered that some treacherous mice had chewed it all to bits. When they reported this sad fact to the dogs, the dogs lost their heads (metaphorically) and chased the cats, whereupon the cats turned and chased the treacherous, sniveling little mice.
All this chasing continues to this very day.
Also to this very day, a wise cat will never        (a) do a favor for a dog, or        (b) trust a mouse to not mess everything up. This story is adapted from a tale found in The Folktale Cat, edited by Frank de Caro (Little Rock, AR: 1992).
Image © Pavoukamoucha| Dreamstime.com - SeamlessPattern Made Of Dogs, Cats And Mice In Four Shades. Photo