Archive for May, 2015

During vaudeville’s heyday in the late 1800s and early 1900s, animal performances were a dime a dozen on New York stages and rooftop gardens, such as Proctor’s Fifth Avenue Theatre. One of the most famous performing pooches was Uno, a nondescript male terrier that was billed as “The Mind-Reading Dog,” “The Educated Dog,” and “The Dog with a Human Brain.”

One organ grinder who broke the mold was Irishman Timothy McGrath, who, for over 10 years, played his hand-organ along 7th and 8th avenues in New York City’s Tenderloin District. Instead of a monkey, Timothy had a grizzly-haired Skye terrier who would sit on top of the organ wrapped in a blanket and holding a basket in his mouth.

On May 3, 1939, one month after popular City Hall cat Tammany died at the Ellin Prince Speyer Hospital, an 11-month-old multicolored female cat from Woodside, Queens, made her debut at City Hall. The cat was the pet of City Hall night watchman Tom Halton, who had been greatly saddened by the passing of Tammany. […]

New York Rangers trainer Harry Westerby discovered Ranger in the winter of 1927. The little girl cat was cold and whimpering outside the steel door of the hockey dressing room in back of Madison Square Garden III, so Westerby brought her indoors.

Billed as the amazing high diving horses, King and Queen were two pure white Arabian horses who had a knack for diving on their own from great heights into almost any body of water.