“Go up Tenth Avenue and in various cross streets running down to the river are some of the worst blocks in the city; and there are blocks corresponding with them along the East River. The names of some of these places are significant: ‘Battle Row,’ and ‘Hell’s Kitchen,’ and ‘Sebastopol.’” — James W. Shepp and […]
Archive for the ‘Crazy Cat Ladies’ Category
1902: The Homeless Cat Lady of Battle Row on Tenth Avenue and West 61st Street
Posted: 27th April 2019 by The Hatching Cat in Cat Stories, Crazy Cat LadiesTags: Battle Row, Crazy Cat Lady, Helen Sawtelle, John Low, John Somarindyck, New York City History
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1905: The Crazy Cat Lady Who Had Her Day in Yorkville Police Court
Posted: 24th March 2019 by The Hatching Cat in Cat Stories, Crazy Cat LadiesTags: Hans Kaiser, Hugh Gaine, Hunters Key, New York City History, Pauline Von Mauderoth, Yorkville Police Court
Anna Kaiser was a crazy cat women. Her husband, Hans, was not crazy about cats. Magistrate Ommen of the Yorkville Police Court had to take one side or the other, whether he liked cats or not. Before the couple married, Anna (née Ammann) had about 50 cats. She agreed to get rid of 20 of […]
1922: The Curious Case of Lilly and Otto, the Dyed-Blue Cats of Margaret Owen, Part II
Posted: 8th October 2016 by The Hatching Cat in Cat Stories, Crazy Cat Ladies, Featured FelinesTags: Angora cats, Henry K. Miller, Margaret Owen, Miller-Clark Animal Hospital, New York History, Old New York, Peter A. Hatting, Radio City Music Hall
When we left Part I of this curious cat tale of Old New York, young Margaret Owen was just about to dunk her two Angora cats, Lilly and Otto, into a basin of blue dye. The blue cats would look great parading on the boardwalk at Atlantic City.
1922: The Curious Case of Lilly and Otto, the Dyed-Blue Cats of Margaret Owen, Part I
Posted: 6th October 2016 by The Hatching Cat in Cat Stories, Crazy Cat Ladies, Featured FelinesTags: Angora cats, Hopper Farm, Margaret Owen, New York History, Old New York, The Blue Kitten
Every once and a while I come across an old animal story that goes into my special folder called “You Can’t Make This Stuff Up.” The following cat tale is somewhat funny, very bizarre, and a bit tragic.
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
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 […]
