America’s ‘First Cats’ deserve a nap

Ten former U.S. presidents are known to have brought their cats into the White House. Tabby and Dixie share the distinction as being America’s first “First Cats.” These two felines moved in as the pets of President Abraham Lincoln in 1861.

An essay posted on the Presidential Pet Museum’s website notes that U.S. Treasury official Maunsell B. Field once wrote that Lincoln was “fond of animals, especially cats. I have seen him pet one for an hour.” Indeed, Lincoln doted on his cats, so much that he once fed Tabby from the table during a formal dinner at the White House.

Mary Todd Lincoln described her husband’s action as “shameful in front of our guests,” but the president laughed it off, saying: Dagnabbit, Mary Todd – “If the gold fork was good enough for former President James Buchanan, I think it is good enough for Tabby.”

Lincoln’s longtime friend Caleb Carman said Lincoln confided: “Dixie is smarter than my whole cabinet! And, furthermore, she doesn’t talk back!”

President Rutherford B. Hayes entered the White House in 1877. The following year, he received a gift from Bangkok, Thailand, believed to be the first Siamese cat ever imported into the United States. According to legend, Siamese cats were regal pets owned by Siam royalty. They lived within the palaces and served as guardians of Buddhist temples.

Hayes named the female cat Siam, and his 12-year-old daughter, Fanny, was ecstatic when the crate arrived after a two-month journey. Siam was allowed to roam the White House and often made ‘grand entrances’ whenever First Lady Lucy Webb Hayes entertained guests.

BJ Bangs of Phillips, Maine, is a freelance writer and producer of the Paws for Reflection blog. She reported: “In the autumn of 1879, Siam became seriously ill from a respiratory infection. The White House staff tried fish, chicken, duck, cream, and even oysters, hoping that Siam would respond.”

“When her condition worsened, the staff sent for the president’s personal physician, Dr. J. H. Baxter. He prescribed beef tea and milk every three hours, but Siam did not improve. Siam survived another five days. Everyone was saddened; her gentle and appreciative ways had endeared her to the entire staff at the White House,” Bangs said.

One of the many pets of President Theodore Roosevelt, who served from 1901-09, was Slippers, a blue-gray tabby cat who had six toes on his right front paw, making him polydactyl. It’s “not uncommon” for a minority of the cat population to have one or more additional toes on their front paws. Polydactyl cats have the equipment to be better hunters as well as better scratcher-uppers of upholstery.

While in the White House from 1913-21, President Woodrow Wilson owned cats named Mittens and Puffins. Both enjoyed leaping on the Wilson’s dining room table during family meals. White House staff members became quite adept at zapping the offending felines with spritzes of water to shoo them away.

When President Calvin Coolidge moved into the White House in 1923, it was a case of “kitty, bar the door,” a play-on-words warning to “take precautions; there could be trouble ahead.”

Coolidge owned several cats. The inventory included Smokey, Blackie, Tige, Bounder, Timmie and Climber (also referred to as “Mud” by First Lady Grace Anna Coolidge.)

Tige was a character. He was a gray-striped shorthaired tomcat who often climbed up to sit on the president’s shoulders and wrap himself around his neck for daily walks. Yet, the cat was an independent adventurer. In a March 1924 snowstorm, Tige eluded White House security to bolt beyond the boundaries of the lawn.

Tige’s disappearance became national news, with Washington radio stations broadcasting “missing cat” alerts. The telephone switchboard at the White House was flooded with offers from the public to provide “replacement cats.” A column in The New York Times reported: “There may be 100 cats at the White House by tomorrow morning.”

Officer Benjamin Fink, a security guard at the Navy Building, located just a few blocks from the White House, discovered Tige “promenading” around the grounds there. He scooped up Tige, who had been gone four days, and returned him pronto to the Coolidge family.

After Tige, there was a gap of more than 30 years until the next cat clawed its way into being a member of the presidential family.

He was Tom Kitten, who arrived at the White House in 1961 as the loving pet of 3-year-old Caroline Kennedy.

U.S. presidents are a diverse lot as pet owners

Dogs and cats have dominated the roster of White House pets over the course of U.S. history, but there have been a few notable and bizarre exceptions – like Rebecca and Reuben – the raccoon pets of President Calvin Coolidge and his wife, Grace. The Coolidges occupied the White House from 1923-29.

Rebecca arrived in 1926, a gift from Vinnie Joyce of Nitta Yuma, Miss. The critter was intended to be the main course for Thanksgiving dinner. Christopher Klein, writing for History.com, reported that Coolidge politely declined dining on roasted raccoon. Rebecca was welcome to stay on, however, adopting the title of “First Raccoon.”

“President Coolidge was known to walk around with Rebecca draped around his neck, while photos show his wife cradling the raccoon in her arms like a cat,” wrote Claire McLean, former owner and curator of the Presidential Pet Museum. “At night, Rebecca would crawl up into her master’s lap in front of the fireplace.”

Grace Coolidge said, “We kept Rebecca leashed when out of doors, but in the White House, she had her liberty. She was a mischievous, inquisitive party, and we had to keep watch of her when she was in the house. She enjoyed nothing better than being placed in a bathtub with a little water in it and given a cake of soap with which to play. In this fashion she would amuse herself for an hour or more.”

The staff saw things a bit differently, Klein reported. He cited an article from the Cleveland (Ohio) Plain Dealer that labeled Rebecca as “the most obstreperous of all the recent White House pets” – unruly and uncontrollable – “as she ripped up clothing and clawed on the upholstery.” The creature could “wriggle free” from harnesses and other restraints, leading to wild chases through the president’s home.

“By early 1928, Rebecca had a new, male raccoon companion, dubbed Reuben by the president, but the two got along about as well as Republicans and Democrats,” Klein said. Having no baby kits was probably a blessing to the Coolidges…and the country.

Then, there’s the story about President Benjamin Harrison and his wife, Caroline, who brought two opossums in the White House during his presidency from 1889-93. He named the marsupials for key elements of the Republican party platform, “Mr. Reciprocity” and “Mr. Protection.”

The Harrisons also had a billy goat, “Old Whiskers,” who would get strapped to a cart to provide joyful rides for the grandchildren. One day, with young Benjamin McKee as passenger, the goat scampered off and granddad was seen sprinting in hot pursuit of the runaway goat cart.

An “eye witness” told the Washington Evening Star: “The President’s coat tails shot straight out behind; he had his top hat in one hand and cane in the other.” He eventually caught up with Old Whiskers and Baby McKee was safe.

Although most White House pets have offered its residents some form of companionship, President Woodrow Wilson kept his for financial reasons, according to Sarah Crow a freelance writer for Best Life magazine.

Wilson oversaw a flock of 48 sheep during his stay in the White House from 1913-21, “using them as a means of keeping the White House lawn trimmed,” Crow wrote. “The sheep actually generated revenue, earning more than $52,000 for the American Red Cross when the wool was auctioned off.”

The boss of the operation was Old Ike, a mean and cantankerous ram. He was very protective of his ewes. While they tended to the grass, Old Ike gathered up and ate the prevalent form of litter on the White House grounds, discarded cigar butts.

When a constituent presented President Abraham Lincoln with a turkey to be roasted for the family’s Christmas feast, the Lincolns’ youngest son, Tad, age 10, vetoed the menu. Dagnabbit, the boy bonded with the bird, whom he named Jack.

“Thus, began the time-honored tradition of the presidential turkey pardon,” McLean noted.

Deviled eggs are a Southern delicacy

Writing for North Carolina’s Our State magazine, Andrea Weigl asserts that in the South: “The deviled egg is revered. It’s both the symbol and the centerpiece for every covered-dish dinner or picnic you’ve ever attended.”

She has credentialed subject matter experts to back her up. One is Liz Williams, the director of the New Orleans-based Southern Food and Beverage Museum. When Williams turned 21, her mother marked her daughter’s adulthood by giving her a deviled egg plate and saying: “You can’t entertain without one of these.”

Debbie Moose, a food writer and author in Raleigh, shared her mother’s advice: “There are two things that a Southern woman always got for wedding presents: a hand-crank ice cream maker and a deviled egg plate.”

Susan Perry of Durham, an egg plate collector, told Weigl she gives egg plates as gifts to newborn girls because she believes all Southern women should have one. “Deviled eggs are the first thing to go at a party,” Perry says. “So, you better have an attractive empty plate.”

On assignment for History.com, Laura Schumm determined the origin of “modern-day deviled eggs – those classic creamy concoctions – dates back to ancient Rome.”

“Around 61 A.D., eggs were boiled, seasoned with spicy sauces and then typically served at the beginning of a meal as a first course,” Schumm reported.

“The first known printed mention of ‘devil’ as a culinary term appeared in Great Britain in 1786, in reference to dishes including hot ingredients or those that were highly seasoned. By 1800, ‘deviling’ described the process of making food spicy.

“But in some parts of the world,” Schumm said, deviled eggs are referred to as “mimosa eggs, stuffed eggs or dressed eggs.” She noted that “salad eggs” is the term frequently used at church functions in the United States to avoid any association with Satan.

According to Schumm, the classic version of deviled eggs is now widely considered to include a mixture of mashed up egg yolks and whites, mayonnaise and mustard, “but professional chefs and home cooks around the world have experimented with numerous variations on the filling, including the use of pickle relish (either dill or sweet), bacon, crab meat”…you name it.

Add pepper and hot sauce, if you care and dare. A sprinkle of paprika on the top adds a splash of color. (Never nutmeg.)

Presentation is critical as well as practical. It requires an official deviled egg plate, platter or tray…especially useful when traveling, so the eggs sit tight in their “depressions” and don’t go sliding off onto the seat or the floor of the vehicle.

Diana Bulls, writing for Kings River Life Magazine in Reedley, Calif., said Duncan & Miller Glass Company in Washington, Pa., most likely made the earliest egg plates in the 1930s.

Angela Huston, a columnist with Medina County (Ohio) Life, an online newsletter, observed: “Every time I make deviled eggs, I wonder ‘what were they thinking’? The ubiquitous ‘they’ is whoever designed the plate specifically for serving deviled eggs with 15 neat, little, oval-shaped slots.”

Dagnabbit. “Anyone who has ever fixed deviled eggs knows the eggs are cut in half; no matter how many eggs you cook, the final count will come out to an even number, and 15 is not an even number,” Hutson said.

“I have finally learned to stop fussing. Now, I just eat the darned extra egg, a necessary sacrifice to have peace of mind — and a properly balanced plate.”

Marie Lawrence of Morehead City, N.C., may have the largest egg plate collection in the United States – 1,007 as of July 4, 2019. One of the fun things about egg plates, she said is that there is no uniformity in the number of depressions. Most common are the even numbers of 12, 18 and 24, however.

Lawrence said she has been collecting egg plates for about 20 years. They are colorful and come in a variety of shapes and sizes and many are hand-painted. “Like flowers, they make you happy,” Lawrence said.

Bulls advised her readers: “You can find vintage egg plates in antique stores, at flea markets, thrift stores, garage sales…and at grandma’s house. Your family might have an heirloom deviled egg plate that makes its appearance at family gatherings – let the powers that be know you want to carry on the tradition – and get the egg plate.”

Paint chip safari is a creative masterpiece

Sherwin-Williams has been a trusted name in the paint business since 1866, and thanks to McKinney, its Durham-based advertising agency, the new Sherwin-Williams ad campaign is creating quite a stir – both on Madison Avenue and on Main Street.

How so? David Gianatasio of Boston, a longtime contributor to Adweek, wrote: “In the latest installment of its ‘Color Chips’ campaign, Sherwin-Williams creates a captivating African jungle, one that is teeming with bright, bountiful, beastly life.”

“It took nearly 30,000 paint chips, along with 24 production artists working a total of 5,600 hours, to bring this majestic menagerie to life (for a 30-second television commercial),” he commented.

Jonathan Cude, who is the chief creative officer at McKinney, remarked: “People aren’t inspired by paint itself. What people really care about is the transformation a coat of paint can provide. Our ‘Color Chips’ campaign is about inspiring you with the possibilities for your home – in some 1,500 different color shades.”

Gianatasio said: “Crafting a jungle scene lets Sherwin-Williams’ full range of flavors really roar.” The safari animals that come to life are all crafted from Sherwin-Williams paint chips. Viewers can identify the spectacular colors of a mandrill, flamingos, zebras, giraffes, meerkats, leopards and elephants. All seem to be on their way to find the nearest Sherwin-Williams paint store.

McKinney selected Buck, a commercial production company with offices in Los Angeles and Brooklyn, N.Y., to assist with the animation aspects. The critics seem to be unanimous in their scoring…it’s a “10” for Sherwin-Williams. Full-page print ads are running in consumer magazines.

“We’ve got bold, colorful moments with the flamingos,” Cude said, “but there are softer, more neutral moments with the elephants and giraffes.”

The July issue of Southern Living magazine features the Sherwin-Williams zebra advertisement. He or she is shown close up with a brilliant yellow-orange sunset in the background.

The angle of the sinking sun causes the zebra’s stripes to magically appear to shift from black and white, appearing to the human eye as tones from a lilac-to-purplish palette. Among the dominant paint chips are “Vesper Violet” and “Grape Mist.” The tagline begs: “Where will color take you?”

The Sherwin-Williams Company was formed in 1886 in Cleveland, Ohio, a partnership between Henry Alden Sherwin and Edward Porter Williams. Both men were in their early 40s at the time, and they were savvy and hard-working entrepreneurs. They found a niche in paint products after dabbling for a time with other commodities.

Over the years, the company hasn’t drifted far afield, choosing to follow a conservative business strategy by engaging in the manufacture, distribution and sale of paints, coatings and related products to professional, industrial, commercial and retail customers primarily in North America, South America and Europe.

A major acquisition occurred in 2017, as Sherwin-Williams purchased Valspar, based in Minneapolis, for more than $9.3 billion. Other familiar brands in the Sherwin-Williams stable are Duron, Minwax, Krylon, Thompson’s WaterSeal, Pratt & Lambert, Dutch Boy, Easy Living and Weatherbeater.

Today, in 2019, Sherwin-Williams continues to duke it out with PPG to claim honors as the world’s top-selling paint company. PPG is kind of faceless and nondescript. On the other hand, Sherwin-Williams has one sorry corporate logo…if one listens to its army of critics.

Dagnabbit. The irony of it all is baffling. Here is Sherwin-Williams. the maestro of innovative advertising, displaying a stodgy corporate logo that “everyone despises” because the image of paint covering the Earth is soooooo politically incorrect.

The Sherwin-Williams logo dates back to 1893. It pictures a giant Sherwin-Williams bucket suspended in mid-air pouring bright red paint over a blue and white globe, with the words: “Cover the Earth.”

Brad Miller, who owns a graphic design firm in Chicago, recommends a total do-over. “Maybe something like ‘color your world’ would be better than ‘dump a can of paint on the planet and kill all who live there,’” Miller said. Beyond that, he says the Earth appears to be skewed off its vertical axis, with the continents jumbled.

Mike Conway, director of corporate communications at Sherwin-Williams, told David Griner, creative and innovation editor at Adweek: “The Sherwin-Williams logo is one of the most recognized in the world. It is not meant to be taken literally, rather it is a representation of our desire to protect and beautify surfaces that are important to people. At this time, there are no plans to redesign the logo.”

Consider the advice of McKinney’s founder, Charles “Chick” McKinney, who died in 2007 at age 75: “Creative is the one area where a single person can defeat an army.”

Irish community celebrates its independence

July 11 is celebrated annually in the Town of Cobh in County Cork, Ireland, as the day the bloody Brits finally went home in 1938. This year marks the 81st anniversary of the flying of the green, white and orange Irish tri-colour flag over Fort Mitchel on Spike Island in Cork Harbour.

Although the Anglo-Irish Treaty of Dec. 6, 1922, provided for the establishment of the “Irish Free State,” the fine print of the agreement granting separation from British governance came with a few strings attached. Dagnabbit; wouldn’t you know it?

One was the provision that Great Britain would retain sovereignty over three strategically important Irish forts – at Spike Island and Castletownbere on the southern coast and Lough Swilly on the northern coast.

Accordingly, the United Kingdom’s Royal Navy continued to hold down the fort at Spike Island, ensuring the island remained under British sovereignty until the fort was formally ceded to Ireland on July 11, 1938. The Union Jack flag was respectfully lowered that day when the British sailors vacated the facility.

Hence, the locals insist that County Cork’s true “Independence Day” is July 11.

The Spike Island fortress is star-shaped and occupies 24 acres. For most of its life, the fort was a prison and known as “Ireland’s Alcatraz.” It housed as many as 2,300 inmates at a time. The facility was closed in 2004 and was reinvented as a tourism destination in 2016.

The Irish word Cobh is pronounced “Cove,” and this compact community of less than 13,000 residents has had enormous historical significance on the world stage. Its harbor on Ireland’s southern coast is considered to be the world’s second largest natural harbor, with access to the Celtic Sea and Atlantic Ocean.

Amid Ireland’s Great Famine (1845-52), Great Britain’s Queen Victoria traveled to Ireland in 1849, and was “warmly received” by the Irish people. She was welcomed among banners that read: “Hail Victoria, Ireland’s hope and England’s glory.”

In tribute to the Queen’s visit to Cobh, town leaders changed the name of the place to Queenstown in 1849. (It remained so until the early 1920s and the formation of the Irish Free State, when the community returned to being named Cobh.)

Several major events occurred during the Queenstown era. During the famine years, Queenstown became the single most important port of emigration. Millions of impoverished Irish citizens boarded vessels in search of a new life in the United States.

The most famous of those Irish emigrants was Annie Moore. She was 17 years old when she boarded a steamship departing Queenstown on Dec. 20, 1891. With her were younger brothers, Phillip and Anthony.

(Their parents had come to America nearly four years earlier, found jobs and saved the money to purchase tickets for the children to come, thereby reuniting the family in New York City.)

On New Year’s Eve in 1891, the vessel from Queenstown arrived at Ellis Island in New York Harbor in close proximity to the Statue of Liberty. However, the ship came in too late for its 148 passengers to be processed that night.

This wound up being a lucky turn of events for the 148, for they would be welcomed to the New World with all the pomp and circumstance New York City had to offer as the first immigrants to pass through the newly built immigration station on Ellis Island on Jan. 1, 1892.

At 10:30 a.m. on New Year’s Day, “the gangplank was lowered amidst the cheers of the crowd and clanging of bells, and Annie Moore had the historic honor of being the first immigrant to be processed at Ellis Island,” wrote journalist Gina Dimuro.

Why Annie? Christopher Klein, writing for History.com, part of A&E Networks, speculated that “an English-speaking, ‘rosy-cheeked’ Irish lass would be a good poster child for immigration at a time when Irish immigrants had already risen to the heights of American political and cultural life.”

“Over the course of the next 62 years, more than 12 million immigrants would follow in the teenager’s footsteps through Ellis Island, and it’s estimated that 40% of Americans can trace their origins back to the immigration station in New York Harbor,” Klein wrote.

The Ellis Island immigration station closed its doors in 1954, and today the Ellis Island Immigration Museum is part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument, under the care of the National Parks Service.

Queenstown, Ireland, would return as a newspaper “dateline” again and again. We’ll go there in future columns.