Caturday felid trifecta: Classical cat duet; statue erected for Hendrix the Coastal Cat ; carousel cats; and lagniappe

A reader sent me this 5½-minute video, and although I’d heard the song before (I once had a girlfriend, a classical soprano, who performed it with a colleague), I’m not sure I’ve featured it on this site. Here’s the YouTube caption:

During a tour in Asia in 1996, Régis Mengus and Hyacinthe de Moulins, members of the Little Singers of the Paris, performed the “Duetto buffo di due gatti”, accompanied on the piano by Rodolphe Pierrepont.

And about the song, well, its origins aren’t clear, at least according to Wikipedia:

The “Duetto buffo di due gatti” (humorous duet for two cats) is a performance piece for two sopranos and piano. Often performed as a comical concert encore, it consists entirely of the repeated word miau (“meow”) sung by the singers. It is sometimes performed by a soprano and a tenor, or a soprano and a bass.

While the piece is typically attributed to Gioachino Rossini, it was not actually written by him, but is instead a compilation written in 1825 that draws principally on his 1816 opera Otello. Hubert Hunt claims that the compiler was Robert Lucas de Pearsall, who for this purpose adopted the pseudonym “G. Berthold”.^[

Don’t miss the complex, fast-paced ending after the applause. Who wouldn’t like this song as part of a classical music concert? Play it for your cat, too!

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The BBC informs us in two article (click to read) that a famous cat named Hendrix has been memorialized, and explains why.

Some information (“Saltburn” is “Saltburn-by-the-Sea,” on the northeast coast of England:

A cat that became a “local celebrity” has had a statue unveiled in its honour.

More than £4,000 was raised to place a bronze statue on Saltburn’s pier in Redcar and Cleveland, where Hendrix was a familiar face – often letting himself into cafes and the local arcades.

The cat, who previously lived in Whitley Bay and was known to ride Metro trains on his own accord, was much-loved by locals and tourists alike.

Owner Nathan Bye thanked the people of Saltburn, Hendrix’s international social media fanbase and Redcar Council who had supported the campaign to memorialise him.

The article has a video about Hendrix, made by Adam Clarkson, which includes this frame of the statue’s unveiling. It’s worth the minute’s watching. People loved Hendrix, and raised £4000 to hve this statue made:

Another article from the Beeb tells us why Hendrix got so much love (click headline to read):

An excerpt from the 2024 piece:

“He always wanted to be outside,” Hannah Chiarella recalls, adding: “Sometimes he was outside for two or three weeks.”

But she did not need to worry too much when her cat Hendrix went on another adventure – his many fans would keep an eye out for him.

First on Tyneside, where he was often seen riding the Metro or hitching lifts on buses, and later on the beach at Saltburn in Redcar and Cleveland, he became something of a local legend.

So much so, people now want to put up a statue in Saltburn in memory of Hendrix, who died aged 12 in September.

“I thought it was quite a nice idea because he did used to bring a lot of joy to people at the beach,” Ms Chiarella says.

“I thought a nice memorial would continue bringing joy,” she adds.

. . .When the family moved closed to Whitley Bay Metro station and later to Saltburn, Hendrix, who was named after Jimi Hendrix, again went about winning over the locals and visitors.

People would send Ms Chiarella photos informing her of Hendrix’s whereabouts and she set up a Facebook page to keep everyone updated.

“We weren’t as worried about him because we knew that everyone was looking out for him,” she says.

Once in Saltburn, Hendrix made the beach his new hangout spot.

“He knew there were a lot of people there and he was going to get a lot of attention,” Ms Chiarella says

He used to go to Saltburn Pier Amusements every day and owner Chelsie Oughton says he used the place as a base, with people travelling just to see him.

“He was charming and just really funny,” Ms Oughton says, adding: “He was here every single day and people couldn’t help but notice him.

“He was a beautiful cat, like a little legend.”

But Hendrix was more than just a cute visitor – Ms Chiarella says he would also cheer people up.

“We used to get messages from people saying how they were sat at the beach, maybe feeling down, and Hendrix would just pop up,” she says.

“It would be a nice part of his life, he helped people as well,” she adds.

RIP, Hendrix. Here’s a short BBC video on Facebook. Click to watch it and be sure to put the sound on.

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Finally, we have a short article about carousel animals that were cats. The article below (click on either headline) gives the following information, along with a bunch of carousel-cat photos.

Golden Age carousel cats (of the domestic sort) came from mostly from The Dentzel Co. and Herschell-Spillman in the US. There were some very rare early PTC cats, but it’s hard to tell if they are domestic or more like Bobcats. Bayol carved a nice domestic carousel cat in France. The other european cats, like the early PTC, appear to be anything from Lynx or Bobcats to small Leopards or Puma. Often the domestic cats would be with their catch in mouth. Usually a fish or bird or occasional rodent, but not always. One Dentzel cat has a crustacean catch. There were quite a few cats carved, but not a lot by any one maker, so they remain among the more coveted carousel figures.

Historic Carousel Cats

And a few photos (uncredited) from the article. Note that almost every ride-a-cat has a fish or bird in its mouth:

Prey-less cat. I rode on many carousel animals when I was a kid, but I don’t remember riding on a domestic cat.

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Lagniappe: a “life hack” from Linkiest:

 

h/t: Erike, Malcolm, Gregory