Quintessence

of Tabby. I've pretty much sworn off Cute Kitty photos for a while, but it's such a treat to come home to the cats, especially LucyFur, who is, indeed, the Quintessence of tabby cat - so much so that when we adopted her as a small kitten (saved from a Woodpile in Los Angeles where we saw her, and her mother and brother being menaced by coyotes - both are also now safe), we recognized that we already knew her Victorian counter-part - Muff Kitty. We bought Muff a few years back in the big antique store in Lambertville, NJ - saw her hanging on the wall, circled around, debated her exorbitant price, returned, and liberated her.

Only Muff turned out not to be the unique painted cat that we'd taken her to be. A couple of years later, I was in Sanders Print Shop in Oxford - and there was an engraving of Muff K. I couldn't afford her, but I took pictures... Clearly she had a Victorian original - and here's some further on-line proof..., even if the artist who executed our picture wasn't any kind of talented copyist. Lucy's big round eyes, and bobcat like pointed ears are clearly in some kind of direct line of descent.