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Fragments 16

Two more London Cats

including
The Catford Cat
Dr Salter's Daydream

Already on the site you'll find accounts of two of London's best-known historical cats,
Samuel Johnson's Hodge and Dick Whittington's (fictional) cat.
Two other, more contemporary ones have come to our attention.

The Catford Cat Catford is a town in the south-east London borough of Lewisham, and 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.

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Our featured feline at the head of the page: your companion through Feline Fragments is Maggie. She came as a kitten from Powys Cat Rescue. One of their volunteers had seen her wandering around, apparently uncared for, and thought her rather young to be just left to roam. The person 'responsible' for her said she 'didn't care', and so the youngster was taken in for rehoming. Only about 4 months old when I brought her home in 2003, she was a self-assured soul, probably because of her early experience, and was soon climbing all the available trees in the garden. She was a determined hunter in her earlier days, and was usually outside, but now prefers snoozing unless the weather is good. She has superb whiskers — and as the photo shows, loves getting into things! (see it here without the puzzle effect)

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