abandon your cat at Clifford's Inn in London

Pandemic montages © Roy R. Behrens 2021

At Harvard, poet Frank O’Hara’s roommate was artist and author Edward Gorey.

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In Lowell MA, Beat Generation novelist Jack Kerouac (author of On the Road) was in the same high school class as Ray Gouding, of the hilarious radio comedy team, Bob and Ray.

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Samuel Butler: “People when they want to get rid of their cats, and do not like killing them, bring them to the garden of Clifford’s Inn [in London], drop them there, and go away. In spite of all that is said about cats being able to find their way so wonderfully, they seldom do find it, and once in Clifford’s Inn the cat generally remains there.”

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E.L. Doctorow: “I have few vices, but one of them is moderation.”

National Parks Poster Series | Banff

Poster (2019) © Roy R. Behrens

Above Banff National Park (2019). © Roy R. Behrens. From an on-going series of posters about wildlife habitats, and national parks and monuments.

Charles Henry Bennett / Shapeshifting Cat

C.H. Bennett, Poor Puss (1863)

Above One of a series of elaborate comic metamorphoses (aka shapeshifting) created by Victorian-era British illustrator Charles Henry Bennett (1863) in sardonic reference to Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection, this one titled "Poor Puss." Courtesy The Wellcome Library.

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The Reverend Benjamin Newton (Vicar of Landwit), Diary (September 1, 1816)—

An entertaining German dined here who teaches the girls music and plays delightfully and sings well with no voice having been shot through the lung. A Mr. Causer having been bit in a drunken frolic by a man of the name of Shipley in the leg last week is obliged to suffer amputation. During an armistice in which the Prussian and French officers were drinking together a son of [Prussian Field Marshall] Blücher gave for a toast the King of Prussia, which a French officer would not drink and soon after when it came to his turn gave [Napolean] Bonaparte which young Blücher would not drink, on which the officer went up to him and without saying anything struck him a smash in the face. Blücher said nothing but went out of the room and returned immediately with a pair of pistols, with one of which without uttering a word he shot the officer dead and then held up the other and said he had that ready for any man who would take up the quarrel. This came to his father's knowledge, who put him under arrest for six weeks.

Hummingbird in Cat's Mouth

Hummingbird surveillance drone

Above Hummingbird-based aerial surveillance drone. Public domain.

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Dorothy Van Doren, The Professor and I. New York: Appleton , 1959, p. 128 [spouse of Mark Van Doren, mother of Charles Van Doren; her brother-in-law was Carl Van Doren]—

When Blackie [the family cat] was a half-grown kitten, I found him with something in his mouth—something that didn't look like a mouse. He is very good about giving up his prey if I insist and this time I insisted; I pried his jaws apart, there was a rush, and a hummingbird flew off at breakneck speed. How Blackie ever caught a hummingbird, I don't know; how he could hold the delicate body in his jaws without hurting it, I don't know either. But it happened; there was no mistaking the tiny size, the pointed bill, the emerald flash; and there was no doubt that it was unhurt.