Buzz Aldrin (and friend) stand at attention for the American flag
“Space, the final frontier.” Nobody could say it better than Gene Roddenberry long before mankind went to the moon.
Today is the 45th anniversary of the day Americans Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set foot on the Moon. Michael Collins held down the fort and stayed with the command module.
I remember my Mom, Dad and I huddling around our black and white television the moment when when the lunar set down. I held my breath as Armstrong called out the lander’s elevation. And finally, he spoke those immortal words, “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.” We cheered and applauded. Man was on the Moon.
My brother’s inlaws were on the cutting edge of technology in those days. They had a color television. Knowing that Art’s teenage sister had an intense interest in everything space, the Richeys invited Mom, Dad and me over to their to watch man walk on the moon on their new color TV. How cool was that!
So six-and-a-half hours after the Eagle set down, Mom, Dad and I were glued to the Richey’s television watching Armstrong descend the ladder and step down on the surface of the moon. Ironically it was being broadcast in beautiful black and white. It didn’t matter. I was watching history.
Then came one of the most quoted (or is it misquoted) phrases ever uttered. “One small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind.”
They say “Punctuation saves lives.” The perfect example, “Let’s eat Grandma.” or “Let’s eat, Grandma.” Likewise adding a simple “a” to the quote makes so much more sense.” It’s hard to remember your lines when the whole world is hanging on your words and you’re worried about the possibility of sinking six feet in lunar dust.
When the remote camera broadcast the launch of the module from the surface of the moon, I once again held my breath. Would they make it? Of course, we know they did. They returned to Earth four days later heroes.
Our heroes: Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin.
I loved the image of the lone footprint in the lunar dust. I got chills when I looked at the photo of Buzz Aldrin standing at attention in front of the American flag. (Most people think the stunning photos of an astronaut on the Moon was Armstrong, they weren’t. Sadly there aren’t any good photographs of Neil on the Moon because he had the camera most of the time. But Aldrin’s presence is certainly well documented.)
Several years later I stood in line for three hours in order to gaze upon a moon rock for 30 seconds. Several armed guards stood nearby. I remember thinking, “Yup. That’s a rock.” Despite its plain appearance, it was a rock that came from the Moon. Wow! I was looking at one of the most expensive, one of the most valuable stones on earth.
Now I don’t believe the conspiracy theorists who think the Moon landing was faked, but when I closely examined the famous shot of the footprint in the dust, I found what could have been pawprints. Although neither astronauts or scientist have found evidence of life on the Moon, I wonder if the Man in the Moon, might really be the Cat in the Moon. Either that or maybe the Moon had been previously visited by a more intelligent race.
AIn honor of the birth anniversary of Ed Lowe, the inventor of cat litter, I’m sharing the history of the litter box. Lowe was borne July 10, 1920.
Ed Lowe came up with the idea of cat litter by happy accident in 1947. Photo courtesy of the Ed Lowe Foundation.
I know most of us grumble as we pick up the litter scoop and approach the cat box. What a pain in the tail! But we do it because we love our kitties, and cleaning the litter box is a necessity just like changing a diaper or washing the dishes.
No one really gives much thought to the impact that cat litter has had on our daily lives. Without it, our day would go very differently.
Cats prefer large litter boxes and we no longer have to sift the litter with a fry strainer. Photo by Weems S. Hutto. Copyright 2013.
I learned how differently while researching my paranormal mystery, Death Under the Crescent Moon (Yard Dog Press, 2013). The story is set in 1939, almost a decade before the invention of KITTY LITTER®.
Have you ever thought about the Litter Box Process? I don’t mean the process involving the alimentary canal. I’m talking about custodial maintenance. Today’s clumping and silica gel litters allows us to simply scoop and toss. But our grandparents had to put a great deal of effort into keeping an inside cat.
According to Katherine Grier, Ph.D., professor of history at University of Delaware, most cats lived outside until after WWII. They did their business in backyards and neighbors’ flower beds. They lived separated from the people who loved them because of the elimination issue and also because few people altered them. (Intact kitties express themselves in ways not conducive with civilized indoor living.) But it’s a dog-eat-cat world, and increasingly, cat lovers wanted to keep their cats safely inside the home.
People couldn’t help
but notice in a natural setting most cats relieved themselves in loose ground,
then covered their waste. This tidy nature hid their presence from predators
and protected them from disease and parasites. Unlike dogs, cats didn’t require
housebreaking; they simply needed loose material.
People began providing inside kitties with “sanitary pans,” usually a 12” by 18” enamel baking pan or 22” by 4” deep galvanized iron roasting pan.
The original litter box was a 9″ by 12″ baking pan. Photo by Weems S. Hutto. Copyright 2013.
To these dedicated
ailurophiles, the sand man had nothing to do with sweet dreams. His dump truck
delivered a fresh supply of cat box sand. According to cat care books published
between 1885 and the mid-1950s, inside cats might also find fireplace ashes, dirt,
absorbent newspaper cat pads, shredded or folded newspaper, or sawdust in their
pans. These books recommended changing and washing the sanitary pan twice daily,
or once-a-day at the very least.
A commercial precursor to clay cat litter came from an innovator named “Poppy” George Plitt, who sold Kleen Kitty, a cat box filler made from wood ashes. Between changings, cat owners removed the poop with a kitchen frying strainer. Just as today we can tell cat lovers by the telltale cat hair on their clothes, in the 1940s you looked for soot. I imagine gray apparel was quite popular among cat fanatics.
Our kitties may have had to do their business in a turkey roaster. Photo by Weems S. Hutto. Copyright 2013.
In
January, 1947 Kay Draper,
a cat lover from Cassopolis,
Michigan, couldn’t reach her cat sand pile because of a deep layer of snow, so consequently her Angora cat was tracking sooty paw prints all over
the house. She asked her neighbor, Ed Lowe (who sold sand
and clay granules), if she could
purchase some sand. Fortunately for cat lovers around the world the snow also
prevented Lowe from accessing his sand reserves. He suggested she try Fuller’s
Earth, kiln-dried clay granules he’d been attempting to sell to chicken farmers
as nesting material.
Like a stray cat who found a full food bowl, Kay returned for refills and brought her cat lady friends with her. Lowe wondered if other cat owners would be as enthusiastic. To test the market, he filled 10 five-pound sacks with what he called KITTY LITTER™ and asked a local pet store to sell them for 69 cents a bag. The shop owner doubted his customers would pay that much. After all, in 1947 minimum wage was $0.43 per hour and a gallon of milk was $0.67. But within a few weeks the shop owner placed an order for more. By the early 1950s KITTY LITTER (which later became Tidy Cats™) became widely available in pet stores.
Today’s cats have abundant litter box options. Photo by Weems S. Hutto. Copyright 2013.
So what did cat care
look like in the 1930s? In Death Under the Crescent Moon, Eva Dupree travels to a sanitarium
with her cat, Ivan. Her maid, Rose, arrives at the clinic every day to
bring Ivan minced chicken giblets and fresh ashes.
While a few
brands of canned cat food were available in 1939, most people fed their cats
table scraps and bread, and of course cream. (Imagine the smell of that litter box.) Despite the horrible
diet provided by their people, I believe cats stayed healthy because they supplemented
their diet with rodents.
What goes in must come
out. In order to tend to the cat’s bathroom, every day Rose must collect cooled
cinders from the fireplace, dispose of mushy used ashes, wash the enamel baking
pan, dry it thoroughly and refill it. Of course, where there’s soot, there’s
grime. As Ivan exits his sanitary pan he deposits dark paw prints all over the white
bathroom tile floor. Daily mopping is just one more step in the process. Ash
residue also migrates to the carpet and bed linens. Keeping an inside cat was
truly a labor of love.
In the book Rose reveals
that she learned about cat care from a real book, A Practical Cat Book for Amateurs and Professionals(Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1939),
written by a particularly enlightened biologist of
the day, Ida Mellen. Mellen, it turns out, gave me peek into the past
while she kept her eyes firmly on the
feline future. Mellen encouraged keeping cat indoors,
altering pets, going to a humane vet
who uses anesthesia for surgery and even gives instructions on how to leash
train a cat—trailblazing for 1939.
I have to admit it was
fun and sometimes horrifying to look into cat care practices of the past. It
certainly makes me grateful for my massive polypropylene litter boxes and my efficient
Litter-Lifter scoop and especially my odor-controlling Dr. Elsey’s Cat Attract
Litter. I will never take the litter box for granted again.
So next time you feel
tempted to complain about litter box duty, think about those cat-loving
pioneers who made your life more convenient and the air in your home more
pleasant. I doubt that the task at hand will seem quite as bad.
