Figure 1 – Portrait of Miss Anna Holch holding Buzzer the Cat, 1913, by Arnold Genthe and in the US LOC. In the public domain in the United States because of its age.

A while back I blogged about “The World’s First Super Model” Evelyn Nesbit. Quite contemporary with Miss Nesbit was a cat named “Buzzer” who belonged to the great early twentieth century photographer Arnold Genthe (1869-1942).- if cat’s ever truly belong to a person instead of the other way around. I will remind you that “Dogs have owners. Cats have staff.”

Genthe photographed many beautiful woman: friends, actresses, and socialites and Buzzer often appeared as an “extra” in these photographs – or perhaps they were actually portraits of Buzzer, with the women being extras. It is an important point of portraiture that hands can appear awkward and facial expressions stiff. But if you place something in the person’s hands you give them a natural look. And what better “prop” for the hands than a cat, who was also guaranteed to melt the severest countenance. Genthe describes Buzzer

“Buzzer IV, whom I had with me for eighteen years, was a large, short-haired yellow cat — half Chinese, half Persian — looking more like a small tiger. He was very haughty, but never vicious, and he seldom condescended to make friends with strangers.”

And in fact, much like movie and stage animal stars of  today there were actually four Buzzers over the course of Arnold Genthe’s career. There is a wonderful collection of portraits of Buzzer and his ladies in the Library of Congress. I include as Figure 1 above one example, a charming 1913 portrait with Miss Anna Holch.

” How we behave toward cats here below determines our status in heaven.”
– Robert A. Heinlein