"Playful, Elegant"

Looking for historical information on hobos and companion animals, I came across Shannon Moriarty's blog post on the homeless and their pets at change.org - and why shelter (people not animal) policies help keep the homeless and their pets on the street.


I've seen them; you have too. Read about it - and relief efforts several cities have mounted - and the readers' comments, including homeless with pets.

I would still appreciate leads on historical information on Great Depression- era hobos and their companion animals.

What got me started? I adopted a kitten between lay-offs last year, the first animal I've ever taken in. And the first cat I've ever lived with - I grew up with dogs. I'm assuming it was myself I was feeling sorry for, but, for whatever reason, it seemed to make sense. I don't believe I acted irresponsibly, though life at home is more precarious now than it was then.


















Her name is Lucy, which was my mother's middle name. I felt in need of some of my mother's spirit when I adopted her, I think. She's a classic American tabby.



Lucy is also what vets call a "CH cat." I didn't know this when I lofted her out of a cage and up onto my shoulder at the North Shore Animal League in Port Washington, NY on a busy Sunday of adoptions last August, wearing her red kitten's collar with the scarred adoption-ID tag. I just thought she was good-looking. She is.

CH, or cerebellar hypoplasia, is a result of a mother cat's exposure to feline infectious enteritis, or distemper, while pregnant. Kittens are born with damage to the cerebellum, which controls coordination and balance. Though the damage is permanent, it is not degenerative and CH cats have a normal life expectancy.

Lucy wobbles and wags when she walks up to you, all expectation, like an excited little kitty. Part of that is CH. She races and plays, and chases and crouches and prances away when she wants to be hunted. She falls down stairs and hits the sides of beds when she tries sailing up onto them, and lands on her back when she leaps.

It's Depression-era comedy, but now as then, there's a Big Message involved.

She is the happiest creature I know. It's daunting. No ambivalence about anything; no fear; no sadness; no doubt that she's loved, an optimism, as each day begins, that it will be full of all the things that she likes the most. And that everything and everyone around her will be instrumental and supportive in her enjoying them.

The parallels to my attitudes to adversity - or lack of them - are pretty obvious. It's no wonder you'd want something like that around if you lived on the street, one of life's travelers.

Lucy's spoiled, as rotten as I can make her. When I was last employed, this meant weekly new toys from a pet store on Madison Avenue, the best money could buy, up to about five dollars: wicker ping-pong balls with tail feathers sticking out the back, velour monkeys on bungee cords that you dangle from window locks, sausage-like tummy pillows upholstered in a leopard print, ethically queasily and realistic baby mice - anything American entrepreneurs and Chinese factory workers could hold hands across the ocean about, and make for 10 cents and sell for five dollars. The store had McCain and Obama look-a-like dog toys during the campaigns, the message being, I'm guessing, that you buy your opponent and feed it to the dogs. Cute. The smaller and whiter the dog, in certain Manhattan zip codes, let's say, the funnier the joke got. Or pit bulls in the Bronx.

Which brings me to my point. I don't buy animal toys anymore. There's the $. And the fact that I don't walk down Madison Avenue on a daily basis.

What does Lucy do? I hear mobilizing animal-lovers ask. Stop right there.

Now, I make them.

Exhibit A:
























This is the white plastic foam rings that safe-package a cylinder of blank DVDs when you buy them, tied together with a piece of butcher's twine.

It makes Lucy beserk. In a good way. (Well, what do we know?) Is it as good as - or as educational - as a wicker ping-pong ball with tail feathers sticking out the back? Readers?

It reminded me, the minute I made it, of the great Anni Albers' jewelry, constructed from hardware-store hardware.






















To quote New York's Museum of Modern Art museum store website, which is selling the Anni Albers' design, paper clips and a sink drainer, above, in a 'studio jewelry kit' -

"During World War II, when materials were in short supply, Albers invented ways to create playful, elegant jewelry using simple components usually found in hardware shops and stationary stores."

I don't think Lucy would have a problem with that.

Thank you for listening, ma'am.

FYI, please check the wealth of 'junk jewelry' sites - like Junk Jewelry - which take the everyday and attempt to transform it. We could only hope to claim this aim as our own.