Archive for the ‘Cat Stories’ Category

In 1917, the president of the Bowling Green Neighborhood Association (BGNA) came up with a plan to help control the feral cat population in Manhattan’s Lower West Side. Dr. Miner C. Hill, a pediatrician in charge of the nonprofit association’s baby clinic, believed that the stray cats were responsible for spreading diseases to the poor […]

The Bowling Green Cat Roundup “When darkness settled down last night over the territory encompassed by West Street and Broadway, Vesey Street and the Battery, and lights began to blink in the tenement quarters of Syrians, Turks, Hungarians and Russians, eerie dirges rose from pitchy backyards. There was a melancholia in the walls, a lost […]

Although they did not take home any ribbons, a trio of black cats belonging to Colonel William D’Alton Mann, publisher of the Town Topics society magazine, were the center of attraction at New York City’s first official cat show.

“The leading cat-painter of America is Mr. J. H. Dolph, whom everyone knows, for his works appear constantly at exhibitions. He has worked and studied much abroad, at Paris, Antwerp, and Rome. Mr. Dolph excels in the delineation of feline and canine character.”–The Monthly Illustrator, Vol. 2, 1894 In Part I of this Old New cat tale, we met John Henry […]

The more J.H. Dolph painted cats, the more the public demanded his cat paintings. Soon he was known only for his cat paintings and nobody paid any attention to his human portraits or landscapes.