The Catford Cat

Catford is a town in the south-east London borough of Lewisham, and today it has a notable and appropriate landmark — a giant fibreglass cat that guards the entrance to a shopping centre called the Catford Centre. It seems to have been placed during the 1970s.

A balloon resembling the Catford Cat (right) was seen at a Bike and Kite Festival in Blackheath, south London, in 2009 (photo © Stephen Craven).

Dr Salter's Cat

Dr Alfred Salter was a local philanthropist in the district of Rotherhithe and Bermondsey, which was one of the poorest and least healthy parts of the city early in the twentieth century. He did much to improve people's dreadful living conditions, amongst other things setting up a community health service years before the National Health Service existed, and in order to help his patients better he went to live in the area with his family. This had the sad result that his daughter and only child, Joyce, contracted scarlet fever; twice she recovered from it, but when she caught it for the third time, in 1910, she died. She was just eight years old. Read more about Dr Salter's distinguished career.

Now, along the Thames Path by the river, on the border between Rotherhithe and Bermondsey, sculptor Diane Gorvin has created Dr Salter's Daydream, unveiled in 1991. The statue shows a kindly Dr Salter in old age, sitting on a seat and waving to his daughter Joyce, who is leaning against the Thames wall with her cat nearby. It represents the daydream of an old man remembering happier times when his 'sunshine' was still alive.

Many thanks to Malcolm Robinson for supplying the photos.