Five O'Clock Tea

image from art.com

“…The ideal hostess makes tea herself in the drawing-room.  A table is equipped with spirit-lamp and shining kettle of silver, aluminium, brass, or copper, and dainty caddy, all laid ready upon a teacloth as fine and as elaborately embroidered as may suit the taste and means of the household.  It gives one a feeling of perfect confidence to see this table laid in readiness, and to note that the preparations are complete, even to the little silver strainer which prevents the leaves from entering the cups.

At many such tables there are three or four infuser spoons for the use of those who like tea made in the cup.  In these days of mal-digestion there are many who regard a teapot as a found of possible disaster, as, indeed, it sometimes is, when the tea is left so long upon the leaves as to extract all their tannin.

Hot cakes are served really hot, and freshly toasted, in the house of the perfect hostess.  Late comers are not offered them in a discouraging condition, dried up and hardened round the edges by having been kept hot in the oven.  The oven is no place for hot cakes.  Small plates are left ready for such as like to eat these cakes by the aid of the pretty little knives and forks made expressly for use at tea.  Some callers still prefer the saucer only, according to Victorian etiquette.  Hot toast, brown all over and well buttered, is indispensable to a good tea in cold weather.  In summer its place is taken by strawberries, cherries, peaches, nectarines, or whatever fruit may be in season.  Fruit knives and forks are laid in a little heap ready for anyone choosing fruit

Sandwiches of various sorts and bread-and-butter, brown and white, are the indispensable portions of fare provided.  Cakes, petits fours, and delicate litte sweet biscuits come next, and the thoughtful chatelaine will not neglect to provide the plain, dry biscuits to which so many of her friends are limited by medical advice, or by the counsels of their beauty doctor…”

Every Woman’s Encyclopedia, Vol III, ca 1910-12, available as a free download (one of a total of seven volumes) from the Internet Archive.

Caturday!

Look What I Brung You, Pop!

Chunk proudy “fetched” a stick in to Brian this morning.  Unfortunately, it was what was left of one of the two blueberry bushes he’s been coddling since last fall.

Quote Of The Day

image from Pinterest

Think what a better world it would be if we all, the whole world, had cookies and milk about three o'clock every afternoon and then lay down on our blankets for a nap. ~ Robert Fulghum

The Online Bookshelf - The Butterfly's Ball

Collage artist/scrapbooker alert - with great Edwardian color illustrations. Available as a free download from Project Gutenberg.

Vintage Postcards - Minnesota

If you are lucky enough to be on vacation this month, I hope it’s somewhere cool.

Caturday!

Quote of the Day

One upside to heat.  Kind of cool to see a cat pant. ~ Jonah Goldberg

Two Can Play At That Game, Dog

I was reading on the patio and noticed Chunk  standing in front of the basement door, whining to get in.

Caturday!

Quote of the Day

image from Pinterest

Sir – May I be allowed in your columns to ask why the British public is so horrified at the idea of women dressing in trousers, seeing that they have for many years tolerated a number of men from the North of the Tweed in wearing petticoats, and shockingly short petticoats too? ~ Amelia Jenks Bloomer

Unanticipated Downstream Effects

Yes, Chunk did it. The church across the street is a Pokemon Go stop and there’s something about clusters of adolescents drifting down the sidewalk that sets him off.

Fortunately, the screen in the front window was reinforced a few years back after the Great Escape.

Johnny Weissmuller Isn't In It

This is the fifty gallon cattle tank

That collects the rainwater

That runs off the roof

Of the garage at the house where Shay lives.

This is the Kong

That bounced into the fifty gallon cattle tank

That collects the rainwater

That runs off the roof

Of the garage at the house where Shay lives.

This is the German Shepherd

That dove in after the Kong*

That bounced into the fifty gallon cattle tank

That collects the rainwater

That runs off the roof

Of the garage at the house where Shay lives.

This is the man

Who has made a cover

To fit over the fifty gallon cattle tank

That collects the rainwater

That runs off the roof

Of the garage at the house where Shay lives.

This is the cat

Who could not care less.

*and enjoyed it so much that he did it four times on Friday morning, sans Kong, which is why I was washing towels all weekend.

Recently

I have been wondering if my country has gone completely mad.

Vintage Magazines - Argosy, 1935

A magazine cover with a few fireworks of its own - Argosy, one of the better and longer-running pulp magazines.  There are quite a few scanned copies online, if you know where to look (www.unz.org is one).

(cover from True Pulp Fiction).

Caturday!

A Wedged Cat In Great Tightness

image from Patricia at agence eureka

Chunk (formerly known as Dribblechin) is as different from Batdog (formerly Newdog – for the ears) as can be.

Batdog is slim, elegant, with dainty paws and a beautifully modeled skull.  Chunk is, well…chunky.  Big paws, big chest, big everything including a blocky head and wide snout (and teeth…oh boy has he got teeth).  When he feels affectionate enough to throw himself at you, which is quite often, it’s not unlike getting hit in the chest with a well-aimed sandbag*.

And, at eighteen months, Chunk is still very much a puppy which means that he has not yet learned subtlety.  Or much of anything else.  What Chunk sees, Chunk gets.

He’s giving Reserve Cat a nervous breakdown.  There has been no aggression or biting, but he follows him everywhere and lies across the head of the stairs so the cat can’t get into the kitchen.  This morning he trapped him in the laundry room, whereupon Reserve Cat learned that he can’t fit behind the freezer any more, poor old fat bastard.  He got wedged, Pooh-like, just behind the front legs and I had to pull him out.

Half an hour ago I caught Chunk with his paws up on the shelf where we feed Reserve Cat, quietly cleaning out a full dish of kibble.

(*why yes.  I have).

Caturday!

We Live and Learn (Or Don't)

from Pinterest

1. Turns out Newdog is afraid of thunder (I assume that’s why he was trying to get under the covers with me very early this morning).

2. Reserve Cat is now pulling the same passive-aggressive crap with Dribblechin that worked so well with Newdog (at least until Newdog wised up).

History Repeats Itself

A reasonable facsimile of the floor around the water dish

As you may recall, when Newdog first arrived, he tried very hard to get Reserve Cat to play with him, ignoring repeated rebuffs and going so far as to boop the cat (behavior not calculated to promote peace and domestic tranquility).

Poor Dribblechin, at eighteen months, is still very much a puppy and has been doing everything he can think of to lure Newdog into fun and games, including lying on his back and waving his paws in the air while chewing on the rope toy.

Alas, to no avail.  Newdog is quite cool to any overtures, and when Dribblechin booped him this morning the reaction was decidedly unfriendly.

It’s only been four days and undoubtedly will work itself out.  In the meantime, Reserve Cat is going walleyed trying to keep tabs on both of them.