Cats at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec

As I was browsing the website of the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (I live a 10 to 15 minute walk away), I've discovered they have an online exhibits on their art featuring cats! Click here to visit (and by the way, it took me a while to figure out you're supposed to browse using the middle click of your mouse).

The Woman and the Cat
by Gertrude Des Clayes, before 1936.

Space Cats!

Stumbled on this bit of internet gold:

Aristocat!

Anyone entertained by internet memes will instantly recognize this little guy. Calling for Jeeves (presumably his butler) in most of his memenic iterations, he has achieved a certain level of stardom, particularly at history.icanhascheezburger.com. Originally, however, he was the star of a postcard. A careful search through Google Images permitted me to track down the name of the original postcard company: The Rotograph Co. Situated at 684 Broadway in New York city between 1904 and 1911, this "major printer and publisher" created over 60 000 postcards. However, nothing is to be known about our little well-dressed chap. In fact, we can't even say if he was photographed in New York at all: Rotograph Co. not only created private cards, but also used other sources as well for their images. 

The only thing we can speculate on is this: it would seem that the same cat was used by the photographer for various poses. Indeed, if you look carefully at each of these Rotograph Co. postcards, you can recognize the same calico cat in each! The general look of each fuzzy face along with the same colour pattern point to this being the same cat (even as a kitten one can recognize the star of these cards). Even though at one point we learn through one card that the cat's name is Rags, the "Famous Rotograph Cat", our subject may well be a she: after all, calico cats are almost always female!

UPDATE: I've recently stumbled on a children's book titled Kittens and Cats: A First Reader by Eulalie Osgood Grover and published in 1911. Among the illustrations are plenty more pictures of our dear Rags! Follow this link to read the book: https://archive.org/details/kittenscatsbooko00grov

Humble beginnings for our little star!

Sources:

• 1905 Rotograph Cat RPPC, Dressed Kitten in Bonnet, A Fat Little Mammy, B 832, Ebay.ca.
• 1905 RPPC UDB CAT IN MOP BUCKET CUTE ROTOGRAPH POSTCARD, Worthpoint.com.
• 1906 "RAGS" The Famous Rotograph Cat Postcard RPPC, Worthpoint.com.
• 1906 RPPC "A LITTLE ESQUIMAU" Cat dressed in fur Rotograph Co NY Cute postcard, Ebay.co.uk.
• Cat and Dunce Cap, Flickr
• Metropolitan Postcard Club of New York City, The Rotograph Co.   1904-1911. 
• Vintage 1906 Rotograph Cat RPPC, Kitten in Tiny Box, A Tight Fit, B 897, Ebay.com.