« One cat just leads to another. » [source*]
We are technically a three-cat household — that’s how many cats we had decided we could comfortably handle. For a while we stuck to this number, and when one cat departed, another one would come to take his place. Then number four walked through the door — he was sort of a part-time cat, until he became decidedly one of ours. Well, four isn’t that much more work than three. When number five appeared, bedraggled, underfed and with a perpetually sad expression (‘he had that look you very rarely find — the haunting, hunted kind‘, to quote Tim Rice), we wanted to give him to a rescue society… and of course ended up keeping him.
Albert Dubout (born as lbert Dubout, 1905-1976), was primarily an illustrator of books (notably, his amical collaboration with French writer San-Antonio, many of whose novels proudly bore Dubout’s covers and inside illustrations), and, with equal talent, a cartoonist and poster designer (check out some of his film posters here), not to mention a calligrapher with a number of delightfully mellifluous signatures. His official website can be found here, in case you want to take a peek.
The following excerpts have been scanned from Les chats (Editions Hoebeke, 1999).
Although the topic is obviously inexhaustible, for some more fun cats, visit Off to the Isle of Cats — and Back by Teatime!, Commence by Drawing the Ears: Louis Wain’s Cats, Q: What’s Michael? A: Kobayashi’s Most Special Cat or Steig Swoops In: The ‘Epic in Jazz’ Cat Sextet.
~ ds
*I don’t like Hemingway at all, but I do have a certain grudging respect for a man who kept some 40+ cats. Rhetorical question: are cats living at that high a density within one house really having a good time?
Who's Out There? 
This is a bit of a non sequitur, but nevertheless, since you mention Edward Gorey… back in the ’80s, when I was freelancing for Celebrity Magazine (a People Magazine copycat published by Marvel), Gorey was one of my interview subjects. As I did in all of these jobs, I closed the session by asking him to tell me something about himself he felt that no one he knew his work could possibly suspect or guess. His answer was that at his summer home away from the city he received TV signals from three different local stations that all carried episodes of the original STAR TREK. During the previous summer he had discovered the show and become completely obsessed with it, ardently watching three or four episodes every day, some of them repeatedly, and was now admitting to me and the world that he had become a deeply hard-core “Trekkie.”
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Wow, that was a *splendid* interview question… ‘to boldly go where no interviewers…’ Thanks for sharing, Connor!
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Cats and dogs make very different protagonists – I’ve always preferred cats for the job. Japanese anime features many cats, but studio Ghibli has splendid cats – the Catbus from My Neighbor Totoro and Baron Humbert von Gikkingen from The Cat Returns. They’re animated, I don’t know if they fit your publication, but these two are Cats Worth Knowing.
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I keep meaning to watch My Neighbor Totoro, and haven’t gotten around to it yet! Your comment can be my motivation 🐈 As for this blog, we try to keep on the topic of comics… more or less, with frequent asides and ramblings, so animated movies can certainly fit somewhere.
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If you have a chance, watch both – the cats are almost direct opposites. The catbus is as athletic (and animated!) as a bus can be, while the Baron is an aristocrat.
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