Miss Lillie James had a lot of cats. She adored her pets, but her extreme affection for them eventually took over her life. Soon she could do nothing but worry that her feline companions would abandon her or die. Her sister, Miss Leia James, told the doctors at Bellevue Hospital that Lillie had been driven crazy by her cats. Miss […]
Archive for the ‘Cat Stories’ Category
1899: Dewey, Stockings, and the Great Cat Hunt at New York City’s Bellevue Hospital
Posted: 28th July 2018 by The Hatching Cat in Cat StoriesTags: Bellevue Hospital, Insane Pavilion, Leia James, Lillie James, New York City History
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1908: Tommie Blackberry, the MacDougal Street Nursery Cat With Ties to a Famous Anti-Suffragist
Posted: 26th May 2018 by The Hatching Cat in Cat Mascots, Cat StoriesTags: Arthur Murray Dodge, Jewell Day Nursery, Josephine Jewell Dodge, MacDougal Street, New York City History, One Vandam
“It seems almost a misnomer to speak of it as a ‘charity’ in the accepted meaning of the word. Far rather is it an expression of the true and highest signification the term can bear; the impulse which takes these little ones from their pitiful and often squalid surroundings, at the same time enabling their […]
1921: Minnie, the New York-Bermuda Ship Cat of Pier 95 That Kept Coming Back
Posted: 18th April 2018 by The Hatching Cat in Cat Mascots, Cat StoriesTags: Cornelius Cosine, Dyckman, Fort St. George, Harsenville, Jacob Harsen, New York History, Sherman Square
In 1893, American lyricist and playwright Harry S. Miller–at one time a New Yorker–wrote a comic song titled “The Cat Came Back.” The original chorus to the whimsical ditty, which today is still a popular children’s song (or at least it was when I was a kid in the previous century), always comes to mind […]
1910: A Cat, A Bulldog, and a Lobster Walk into a Harlem Restaurant…
Posted: 18th March 2018 by The Hatching Cat in Animal Stories, Cat StoriesTags: 125th Street, Apollo Theater, Hannah Lawrence, Harlem, Jacob Schieffelin, Manhattanville, New York History, Nieuw Haarlem
This quirky lobster tale of Old New York begins on a Sunday night in May 1910 when Gus, a brindle bulldog, walked into Fay’s restaurant at 255 West 125th Street in Harlem around 7 p.m. and sat down for dinner with his master. Gus was reportedly well behaved, so he was allowed to sit with his […]
1899: The New York Cat Who Fell to Earth on West Fourth Street
Posted: 26th February 2018 by The Hatching Cat in Cat StoriesTags: Benjamin G. Dovey, cat story, Herring Farm, New York City History, New York University, Washington Square, West Fourth Street
On September 4, 1889, Benjamin G. Dovey offered a $10 reward for any information leading to the arrest of the person who had tossed a glossy black cat with tiger stripes from a top-floor window of the brick house at 28 West Fourth Street. “If I can discover the guilty wretch who hurled that poor, […]
