Posts Tagged ‘New York City History’

In August 1904, Charles J. Nielsen, one of the most prominent cigar manufacturers in Brooklyn, acquired a black cat for his Bushwick cigar shop on the southeast corner of Broadway and Gates Avenue.

Leonidas Arniotis had about three dozen trained circus dogs and cats that performed in New York City and other cities throughout America in the late 1890s.

In 1904, an East Village man was charged with disorderly conduct for serving catnip powder to cats, causing them to become intoxicated in public.

Alberto Gaston de Bassini, aka the Chevalier, was a man who truly loved and cared about cats. He fed them, bathed them, and sang to them, and named them after heroes and heroines from famous operas.

In January 1901, the janitress for the tenement at 141 Saint Ann’s Avenue in the Bronx opened her heart and door to many cats seeking food and shelter.