cat

I was a shoeshine boy back in the 60’s in Miami at the Seaboard RR Station! Not only did I make good

Money, but met a many good people including GI’s that were heading to Nam. I was only 10 and did not know the gravity of the situation that the boys were heading over too!

Early aviator John B. Moisant (1868-1910) and his feline frequent flying companion, Mademoiselle Fifi. See: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Moisant

Thanks for the information about Moisant and (equally important!) the name of the cat. We'll add some information to our description.

You get a lot of dead mice in church organs. You need to hoover them out periodically, or they turn to dust and make the pipes cipher. Dead cats are less common, in my experience.

Okay, I know I requested more cat photos, but this wasn't quite what I meant :-)

ew

Via Trove, this from 1887 - " ... The tomb of the Earl of Kildare, a huge, plain structure, usurped the place of the high altar when altar and sacrifice were no longer needed; and a motley collection of other tombs, tablets, and statues (almost all of Protestant days) perpetuate the memory of local nonentities and historical villains in epitaphs "so flattering to all, that surely death hath claimed the good alone"—an instructive contrast with the plain, unvarnished date tale and the humble orate of the olden Catholic days. On a shelf stand two altar candle-sticks and a gilt tabernacle. An interrogatory look elicits from the custodian the unwilling information that they were kept over as relics of the time when King James set up Roman worship in Christ's Church — for a brief season. In reverent proximity to the tabernacle are the mummified bodies of a cat and a rat, discovered by some workmen wedged fast in a crevice behind the great organ. They are in excellent form and preservation. Every muscle in pussy's frame is strained to the utmost tension in unavailing efforts to reach the little rodent, who has taken refuge in a narrow slit in the wall, just one little inch beyond the reach of his pursuer's deadly claws. The custodian evidently looked upon the mummies as the gems of his collection, speaking of them with unwonted volubility, and "letting-off" for the thousandeth time a venerable jest about the fryingpan and the fire. ... From - trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/170599522?searchTerm=c... (half way down column 4)

Flickr is sometimes amazing! In 2008 via Martin J murphy