Shugborough, Staffordshire, and more

Retrospective (3): Feline tales

It has been said à propos of social media that, having invented the most sophisticated form of communication yet devised by humankind, we use it for sharing pictures of cats. I offer no apologies, though, for this short selection of cat posts, offered as my third retrospective to celebrate a decade of this blog. These, after all, are architectural cats, and the image of the feline form, used as an embellishment on or near buildings, says something about our fascination with these intriguing, beautiful, and sometimes infuriating creatures.* My handful of posts contains cats from the mid-18th to the late-20th century, but which show artistic influences stretching back thousands of years. And that is proof enough that not just our relationship with cats but also our artistic engagement with them is far, far older than the internet.

A sea-going cat in Staffordshire

A church cat in the Cotswolds

A museum mouser in Hereford

A landmark cat in...Catford

The Egyptian-style cats of Mornington Crescent

A ginger tom in Thaxted.

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* The novelist Raymond Chandler referred to his cat Taki as his 'secretary' because whenever Chandler tried to write anything, the creature would drape itself over his notepad or sit on the copy he wanted to revise. I have had this experience with a cat myself and have found it beguiling and maddening by turns.

Thaxted, Essex

Weather forecats

Plain vanes or pennants often, fish now and then, foxes and hounds, ships, and human figures occasionally, and the ubiquitous cockerel more frequently than not; sometimes a stag, a horse, or a beast from the field of heraldry; a dragon or grasshopper or two. That list sums up the iconography of weather wanes (or wind vanes, or weathercocks, as in ‘That weathercock’s a fish!’), though no doubt my readers can think of some more examples.

There are also a few weather vanes that are famously unique landmarks: Old Father Time at Lord’s Cricket Ground, Sir Cloudesley Shovel’s ship The Rodney at Rochester, Erasmus seated the wrong way round on a horse in Whitechapel.

My picture shows one that’s more humble than these examples, and far from unique. But I’ve not often come across feline weathervanes, so wanted to share this cat in Thaxted, set on his pleasantly scrolly mount. His tail is scrolly too, and his markings admirable, although I wondered when I saw him if they had faded from a deeper ginger. Whether or not that’s so, he still stands guard effectively, catching the eye, and the wind.