Cats on Carousels

A leaping carousel cat, early 20th century,

carved at the Dentzel Carousel Company, Philadelphia.

Now in the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum.

Photo courtesy of Trip Advisor.

When you think of carousels, you probably think of brightly painted horses, but back in the heyday of hand-carved American carousels it wasn’t unusual to see lots of other colorful animals going ’round and ’round on these rides. The heyday I am speaking of was from 1880 to 1930, roughly. Carousels were a Really Big Thing then, and some 5,000 of the rides were built, with all sorts of wooden creatures on them. Besides horses of all types, there were rabbits, giraffes, pandas, ostriches, frogs and, most importantly for us, cats. (Lions and tigers were also common, but I am dealing only with domestic-type cats today.)

One of four cats on the

Woodside Park Dentzel Carousel.

We cannot tell what

this cat has in its mouth.

A bird, perhaps?

Photo by Smallbones [CC0],

via Wikimedia Commons.

I have found several of these carousel cats, and as far as I know they were all made in Philadelphia at the G. A. Dentzel Steam and Horse Power Carousel Company. They were made or inspired by Sicilian master carver Salvatore Cernigliaro, who immigrated to the United States in 1902 and worked for Dentzel’s for some 25 years. Cernigliaro was especially known for his rabbits, dancing bears, and cats. The cats are leaping happily, tail up, and have a fish in the mouth. Some Dentzel cats carry a bird, frog, crab, or squid.

The carousel cat pictured at the top of this post is currently at the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum in Williamsburg, Virginia. We can’t say for sure whether it was carved by Cernigliaro himself, but it does follow his imaginative, fanciful style.

Cats on the Woodside Park Dentzel

Carousel, early 20th century.

Photo by Smallbones [CC0],

via Wikimedia Commons.

The next two cats are both from Philadelphia’s Woodside Park Dentzel Carousel, now in that city’s Please Touch Museum. Some of the animals on this carousel date from 1908, though the ride did not open until 1924. The carousel has been fully refurbished, so if you are in Philadelphia you can actually take a ride on it. Try to ride on one of the four cats, but if those are taken you’ll have many other animals to choose from: there are also 40 horses, two pigs, two goats, and four rabbits.

[She of Little Talent reminds me to tell you that information for this post came from the 1990 book Grab the Brass Ring: The American Carousel by Anne Dion Hinds, as well as the International Museum of Carousel Art.]

The Cat Behind the Camera

In the Rogue's Gallery

Photographic print c1898.

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

The Mysterious Case of Dizzy the Dancing Cat

Miss Cuddlywumps reviews the story “A Case of Catnapping” by A.H.Z. Carr

“A Case of Catnapping” is the story of the abduction of Dizzy, a cat who lives with a vaudeville performer and is in fact the star of his act. Dizzy does things your average self-respecting cat would never do. She wears little boxing gloves and punches a punching bag, she jumps through hoops and does somersaults (that’s how she got her name), she dances. Audiences love this little gray tiger cat, and her person, Dave Knight, rarely lets her out of his sight, because Dizzy is pretty much all he has going for him.

When Dizzy disappears minutes before a performance, Knight is frantic and hires a private detective, offering to give up his entire savings—$5,000—if only the cat can be found. The detective, Jack Terry, takes the case, largely because he and his wife have seen Dizzy’s act and his wife would never forgive him if he didn’t help. So the detecting begins.

At first I suspected Knight’s fiancée, Maribeth, of doing something unfortunate to Dizzy, because she says this: “As if a cat—even Dizzy—should be allowed to decide how people should live their lives. Isn’t that ridiculous…?” (Really, life would be so much simpler for you humans if you would just do what your cats want—without delay or complaint.) But the detective quickly rules out Maribeth and sets his sights on other characters in the theater.

It’s interesting to see how Terry puts the case together, from one clue to the next. There’s a leprechaun (not a real one), a trapdoor, an open window, and a tell-tale cat scratch. Terry figures out who took Dizzy and why, but he still has not done the most important thing, and that is to locate her. To do this, he uses some old-fashioned cat psychology.

(She of Little Talent and I are big believers in cat psychology. Old SoLT once used this method to find her lost cat hiding outside under an overturned wheelbarrow. This was one of the proudest moments of her life. Poor old SoLT.)

Terry surmises that Dizzy has gone off to find a “boyfriend,” so all they need to do is locate an eligible tomcat and they will locate Dizzy. Personally I was not so sure Dizzy would shack up with the first tom she ran into, but I suppose she is more of a floozy than I thought, because the detective’s method works perfectly.

“A Case of Catnapping” is an enjoyable and interesting read, though there is nothing cozy about it. The story was written in 1954 and has a very 1950s feel—sort of noir-ish without being too dark. We don’t actually get to see much of Dizzy herself, but the people—especially Knight and Maribeth—are interesting. All in all, this is a captivating cat mystery, and so I give it…

[“A Case of Catnapping” has appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (1954) and Abigail Browning’s book titled Feline Felonies (2001).]

[A.H.Z. Carr was actually an economist named Albert Zotaloff Carr. In addition to mystery stories, he wrote about politics and economics. He wrote just one novel, Finding Maubee, which was later adapted into a movie called The Mighty Quinn.]