April 18, 1835

John Henry Dolph (April 18, 1835 to September 28, 1903) was an American artist who not only studied in Paris, he brought home some French models: cats. Not sure if the kittens below are part Angora or not, because it was Angoras he returned with. He also had other cats.





Sometimes we think cats were safer in the 19th century, without our asphalt rivers of death. Safer and happier because their wild-loving nature could be indulged. But this account of Dolph's cats suggests otherwise.


'[Dolph bought] two Angora cats during one of his trips to Paris. One of the cats was shot and killed by someone who mistook him for a skunk in the bushes. The other was Josephine.

'Josephine was a huntress who could not be kept indoors at night. She also made a lot of noise outside, angered all the neighbors on Academy Lane. John and Mary would try to find her, but she always stayed quiet until they gave up and turned off the lights. Then she’d begin her nightly chorus.

'One summer Josephine gave birth in the carpenter shop. Her kittens were beautiful, although not pure Angora. When some little neighborhood boys started playing with them, Josephine carried them away to a safe hiding place.

'For days she would come to the house for meals, but then run away through the fields. Then one day she brought a dead kitten to the house.

'Dolph told the St. Nicholas, “She looked at me beseechingly out of her large, lovely eyes, and licked the kitten all over, and looking at me again with an expression so human that I felt my eyes moisten.”

'Each day after that Josephine brought another dead kitten to Dolph, each with a fatal cut in the neck. Apparently she had been keeping them under the barn on the property, and a weasel had gotten to them. Only one kitten survived.'

So much for a rural paradise. Still there is such a thing as a stupid cat.  I remember one when I was growing up. She moved her litter out a window onto a flat roof. Where her kittens rolled off. 

John Henry Dolph would take kittens people brought him, and after he painted them, he found them "good Christian homes.