I love a feel-good story out there in the book world, and this one is sure to give you the warm fuzzies. It takes place here on Vancouver Island, where you’ll find AbeBooks headquarters nestled just a hop, skip and jump away from downtown.

Fans may know that Theodor Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, developed a reputation for sending signed copies of his books to children’s hospitals, for sick children to enjoy. Over 50 years ago in 1957, Seuss sent a signed, first edition copy of his now iconic book The Cat in the Hat to a children’s hospital here in Victoria. Then called the Solarium, and now known as the Queen Alexandra Centre for Children’s Health, the centre provides a variety of short and long-term specialized health care services to children and youth with The Children’s Health Foundation of Vancouver Island.

When Seuss sent The Cat in the Hat to the centre, he dedicated it to all the children, present and future, who would come across it while being treated there. Somehow over the years, the book vanished, only to resurface in January 2013 at a prominent Victoria auction house known as Kilshaw’s. A trail of clues and investigation revealed that at some point in the past five decades, the book had made it to a bookshop in La Jolla, California (and has the stamp to prove it), and was sold here in Victoria for 25 cents at a garage sale in 1992.

When the book ended up at Kilshaw’s auction house, serendipitously, a medical doctor attending the auction to find furniture recognized its significance. He entered into a bidding war and won – specifically to return the book to its rightful place among the children of the centre. Victoria-based AbeBooks bookseller Neil Williams lent a hand as well – as an expert in children’s books, Williams not only verified the authenticity of the signature, but also waived his fee when he learned the book’s destination. Kilshaw’s auction house did the same.

“The book somehow got lost. There is no history of when it came here. It was at least in the late 1950s or early ’60s,” said Jessica Woollard with the Children’s Health Foundation of Vancouver Island, which is on the QACCH grounds and helps support the centre. “There is no record on how it ended up across the road in a rummage sale.”

Woollard said the foundation has received some interesting donations in its time – most recently gold from old fillings from two dentists; and $1,100 from the outcome of a contest via Twitter by the owner of the Indianapolis Colts football team – but the Dr. Seuss book holds a special place in their hearts.

“We know how significant Dr. Seuss is to kids, and for a centre that helps kids with special needs this is amazing,” she said. “It’s hard to believe we have this book with his signature.”

And if you find yourself desperately wishing you had your own copy, don’t worry – AbeBooks has a wide variety of cool and collectible Dr. Seuss books and ephemera.

via vicnews.com

Louis Wain was a British artist in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, best known for his whimsical and chaotic drawings of cats. If you’ve come across any of Wain’s art, you know it’s memorable. The cats and kittens are depicted with large, wide eyes, often with crazy, spiky fur, and with psychedelic patterns and backgrounds. The cats are anthropomorphized, wearing clothes, having conversations, playing musical instruments and more. If you are a fan of cats, or unusual children’s art, they are utterly charming.

Wain’s story is rather a sad one, unfortunately, in many regards. He was born into a family with a lot of mental illness, and was the only one of six children in the family ever to marry. His longtime devotion to cats began when he was married in his early twenties. His wife Emily fell ill with breast cancer, and Wain found that their kitten, Peter, lifted his sick wife’s spirits immeasurably. He began to dress the kitten up and teach him to do little tricks to make his wife happy. He also began to sketch Peter, and it was on a promise to Emily that he persevered and published his first drawings.

Wain was a highly productive artist for the following three decades or so, providing work for countless children’s books, as well as advertisements and features in magazines. His love of cats defined his entire oeuvre (though he did branch into dogs, from time to time), and he became chairman of The National Cat Club in 1898, and even had his own Louis Wain’s Annual from 1901-1915.

But Wain’s success did little to secure his financial future – he had a mother and five sisters to support, and was a poor businessman, often selling his work outright with no thought to copyright or royalties, and was taken advantage of frequently.

Around 1907, Wain’s own mental health began to decline rapidly, and the previously affable, good-natured artist became paranoid, suspicious and delusional as schizophrenia began to take hold. He was committed in 1924, to the pauper ward of a mental hospital. When news of his circumstance reached the public, there was outcry from many, including H.G. Wells, who championed Wain’s cause. Wain was, as a result, moved to a much more pleasant hospital with abundant green space (and even cats), and he spent the remaining years of his life there in relative peace.

Some students of Wain’s art have claimed that the deterioration and change in Wain’s mental state can be clearly demonstrated through a study of his drawings and paintings, while others argue that is problematic. The latter claim that Wain’s frenetic, chaotic, psychedelic-patterned cats were experimentation with for, color and style, and that Wain also continued to create more conventional (albeit playing sports and talking) cats well into his later career. It is tough to know whether to lend any credence to the theories, as few if any of Wain’s works were dated, anyway.

Regardless, for a cat lover, an art lover, or a collector of vintage children’s books, Louis Wain is not to be missed.

And if you can’t get enough weird children’s books about cats, be sure to check out Mee-a-ow! Or, Good Advice to Cats and Kittens by R.M. Ballantyne.

Enjoy this selection of Wain’s cats, depicting great variation in his artistic style over the years.

The Perogy Cat was born in 2003, which makes today his 10th birthday. If you want to be specific, it is the 10th anniversary of the first Perogy Cat drawing by Gareth Gaudin. If you just went: “what?” and enjoy comics, here’s a thing you might like to know about.

Gareth Gaudin arrives at his shop on a sunny Thursday morning to welcome us, and immediately finds that some drunken hooligan has presumably leapt in the air and smacked his wooden sign, which now hangs crookedly by one side only. He reaches to adjust it, then winces and tells us he has thrown his back out by obligingly tossing his three-and-a-half-year-old daughter in the air. Still, despite injury to both back and pride, Gaudin is good-humored, cheerful and game to go after ferreting out some acetaminophen from behind the counter.

The shop, which Gaudin runs with his co-owner Lloyd Chesley, is Legends Comics and Books, found at 633 Johnson Street in the heart of downtown Victoria, BC. The pair have been in business together since 2003 – Gaudin had been at Legends for a decade, was ready to buy, and went into partnership with Chesley.

Gaudin, a long-time Victoria resident and graduate of Oak Bay High School, also draws his own comic strip, The Magic Teeth Dailies, and is the mastermind behind…

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We were certainly enchanted by many aspects of Hemingway Home – the beautiful pool with its potted plants and whimsical decorative elephants; the cat-fountain made from a urinal sourced from a bar Hemingway frequented; seeing Hemingway’s writing workshop; the house itself including countless lovely chandeliers and sweet green shutters, and much, much more.

But our favorite part was the cats. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 cats, many claimed to be descended from Hemingway’s own polydactyl (six-toed! Think cats with mittens) kitties roam the grounds, seemingly carefree and happy. There are kitty hideaway houses nestled here, there and everywhere on the estate, many with cats inside. But it was also common to find a cat on a railing, a cat snoozing in a patch of sunny hibiscus, or a cat on the stairs. I had to laugh at Hemingway’s bedroom, whose bed and its beautiful chenille bedspread are off-limits to visitors, but which boasted two sleeping cats. I liked very much the casual approach to the furry felines. They are clearly well fed, well-cared for having their needs met, but otherwise they are largely left to their own devices. Which is where someone took umbrage, according to an article on csmonitor.com:

At some point several years ago, a museum visitor expressed concern about the cats’ care. The visitor took that concern all the way to the US Department of Agriculture and, literally, made a federal case out of it.

Soon USDA inspectors showed up in Key West. They said that if the museum wanted to display cats it needed an exhibitor’s license as required under the federal Animal Welfare Act. (That’s the same law that regulates circuses, zoos, and traveling dog and pony shows.)

Federal officials advised the museum that it also needed to take action to: Confine the cats in individual cages each night, or construct a higher fence around the property, or install an electric wire atop the existing brick wall, or hire a night watchman to keep an eye on the cats.

The museum was ordered to tag each cat for identification, and add additional elevated resting surfaces within the cat’s enclosures.

USDA officials also advised that the museum would face fines for noncompliance.

The case has been appealed and re-appealed and gone back and forth, but as it stands today, it does look as though the people in charge of Hemingway Home will have to make some substantial changes to their approach to the cats there. I very much hope that the story has a happy ending, a mutually satisfactory solution is reached, and the cats can continue going about their cat business while charming visitors to no end.

The whole thing does seem perversely opposite the spirit of Key West, though, where aimless wandering seems encouraged by people and animals alike, and the spirit of be-yourself-and-do-your-thing is alive and well. There are chickens and roosters wandering around the streets haphazardly, and people pay them little mind. There are people sitting in doorways, on street corners, drinking a beer, smoking a cigar, playing an instrument, just enjoying a good sit. It seems ridiculous to the extreme to get one’s knickers in a twist about regulating the cats.

Two of the cats at Ernest Hemingway House. The white one is named Spencer Tracy.

There you go. I’ll bet you feel weirder already (and possibly a little outraged).

David Mason Books has been in business for 40 years and is home to over 60,000 books, including 19th century British and American literature, modern first editions, Canadian literature, science, travel & history from the 18th to 20th century, fine bindings and much more. If you find yourself in Toronto, be sure to stop in for a purr with the cats and your next great read!

It’s an 1860 children’s book called Mee-a-ow! Or, Good Advice to Cats and Kittens by Robert Michael (R.M.) Ballantyne. Ballantyne was a 19th-century Scotsman who lived in Canada and worked for the early Hudson’s Bay Company. He was an incredibly prolific writer, and wrote right up until his death in 1894. He wrote somewhere in the neighborhood of 90 books, primarily children’s and juvenile fiction. The book featured here is a story about some very naughty kittens who consistently get up to mischief, and a mother’s cat attempts to set them straight. It’s lovely, full of piano music and songs for children to learn, poems, beautiful color plates, and of course the story itself.

…there is, however, a great deal more hitting by mother and crying by offspring than I am accustomed to seeing in modern-day children’s books. And I can’t help noticing that the mother cat’s beating-implement of choice is a cat-o-nine-tails.

…get it? Cat?

Have you heard of Harry Whittier Frees? Born in 1879, Frees was an American photographer who became well-known for his recognizable and unusual style of photography. Specifically, he posed animals in human scenarios – riding bicycles, painting on easels, sitting in a ferris wheel at the fair. Real, live animals, which he also dressed in tiny elaborate outfits. As these staged photographs were of animals and frequently included clever or cute captions, many have mused that Frees should be considered the father of LOLcats. In his book Animal Land on the Air, Frees expounded in great depth upon the individual natures of the kinds of animals he photographed, and how their traits made them more or less easy to work with:

“Rabbits are the easiest to photograph in costume, but incapable of taking many “human” parts. Puppies are tractable when rightly understood, but the kitten is the most versatile animal actor, and possesses the greatest variety of appeal. The pig is the most difficult to deal with, but effective on occasion. The best period of young animal models is a short one, being when they are from six to ten weeks of age. An interesting fact is that a kitten’s attention is best held through the sense of sight, while that of a puppy is most influenced by sound, and equally readily distracted by it.”

Huh. Kudos for kittens.

Frees eventually garnered some attention for his weird and adorable work, and had some success in the arenas of postcards and children’s books. I can only imagine the depth of the man’s patience, in such a technologically different era, in capturing each of those shots so perfectly, entirely at the mercy of a warm and squirming puppy. I imagine many shoots were suddenly paused on account of an overwhelming urge to cuddle.