In one of a cluster of six shabby little frame houses at Hoyt and Livingston Streets, Brooklyn, stubbornly holding their own there against the huge overshadowing business buildings reared all about them, there lived until yesterday a hermit spinster, Miss Octavia Fredericks. The neighborhood was full of stories of her, many of them purely legendary […]
Archive for the ‘Cat Stories’ Category
1912: The Cat Lady of Hoyt Street, Brooklyn, and the Mysterious Thanksgiving Day Fire
Posted: 13th November 2015 by The Hatching Cat in Cat Stories, Crazy Cat LadiesTags: Alphonse Friedrich, Anthony Oreckinto, Brooklyn History, Cat Stories, Hoyt Street, New York History, Octavia Friedrich
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1895: George Techow and His Performing Cats That Made Their Debut on Broadway
Posted: 31st October 2015 by The Hatching Cat in Cat Stories, Featured FelinesTags: Criterion Theatre, Herr Techow, Moscow Cat Theatre, Olympia Theatre, Oscar Hammerstein, Techow's Cats
“His collection of tabbies is the only show made up entirely of feline soubrettes that was ever organized in the world. Everything they do is performed with the upmost grace. They are as clever as any trick dogs or monkeys and much more entertaining to watch.” – Los Angeles Herald, September 6, 1896, in a […]
1884: Mutilator and the Legendary Newspaper Office Cats of The Sun
Posted: 15th September 2015 by The Hatching Cat in Cat Stories, Featured FelinesTags: Charles Dana, Helen Winslow, New York History, Office Cat, The Sun, Willard Bartlett
“A single member of this [cat] family has been known, on a ‘rush’ night, to devour three and a half columns of presidential possibilities, seven columns of general politics, pretty much all but the head of a large and able-bodied railroad accident, and a full page of miscellaneous news, and then claw the nether garments […]
1886: General Muff, the Sophisticated Literary Cat of New York’s Upper East Side
Posted: 28th August 2015 by The Hatching Cat in Cat Stories, Featured FelinesTags: 505 Park Avenue, Cat Stories, Henry Clay Overin, Mary Louise Booth, Mineola Garage, New York History, Upper East Side
May it be long before Muff’s gracious personality requires an epitaph, but when that time comes, the following lines will apply to him as fitly as to the one for whom they were written, the poet Whittier’s cat, Bathsheba:“Whereat none said ‘Scat!’Better cat never satOn a mat, or caught a rat,Than this cat. Requiescat!”–Famous Pets […]
1939: Snooky, the Sophisticated, Salmon-Loving Cat of New York’s City Hall
Posted: 16th May 2015 by The Hatching Cat in Cat Mascots, Cat StoriesTags: Fusion, New York City Hall, New York History, Snooky, Tom Halton
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. […]
