Banjo Kitty!
We have had this cabinet card of a cat playing a banjo for years. Although some photographers used stuffed animals for genre images we feel that this kitty is alive if obviously annoyed at being posed with a banjo, top hat, and gloves. I believe the photographer may be Louis De Ribas, a Boston photographer who patented a drop shutter in 1887. The time, the place, and the name seem right.
I used a slide (*now replaced with a scan of the original) of it recently for a demonstration to a friend who is considering the purchase of a scanner. The scan was only going to be a demo and I didn’t even plan to save it. When we looked at an enlargement of the scan we saw faint writing on the image. That became a demonstration of contrast enhancement.
The only part we could read was “…. to Me Quickly My Darling” and “copyright …..” Was this the title of the song the cat was “playing”? A Google search brought us to “Come to Me Quickly My Darling” from the 1874 comic operetta Evangeline. It was loosely (very loosely it seems) based on the Longfellow poem Evangeline. It toured and was revived periodically for over 30 years. Its popularity seemed partly explained by the liberal use of ladies in tights but texts also mention a two-person dancing heifer and an amorous whale. Isn’t the internet amazing!
