Day 9

For the 9th day we came back to telling famous stories. Who are the pets on the portraits, which writers used their cats as inspiration, and who are famous cats in books?

 

         
The first book we talked about is Pets in Portraits written by Robin Gibson. The book explores images with the remarkable stories of the animals of some of history’s most notable figures that can be found in the National Portrait Gallery in London. From Jack, the pet swan of the world famous prima ballerina Anna Pavlova, to Dizzy, the beloved pug of one of history’s most controversial divorces, Wallace Simpson, the book is full of inspiring and fascinating stories on our faithful animal counterparts.

Have you heard about book A Street Cat Named Bob? This best-selling book tells a story of street musician James Bowen and his cat Bob. When he found an injured cat curled up in the hallway of his apartment building, he had no idea how much his life was about to change. He slowly nursed Bob back to health and then sent the cat on his way, imagining that he would never see him again. But Bob had other ideas...

Did you know that cats were popular pets of many famous writers? Ernest Hemingway and his cat Snowball. During the writer's travels, he was gifted a six-toed cat he named Snowball. He liked the cat so much that in 1931, when he moved into his Key West home, he let Snowball run wild, creating a small colony that populated the grounds. Today, some 40 to 50 six-toed descendants of Snowball are still allowed to roam around the house. Polydactyl felines are sometimes called “Hemingway Cats.”

 In the evening we participated in story telling activity where we had to role play different stories. The goal of the exercise was to show examples of the potential problems that appear in the families that have pets and how those problems can be constructively solved. One of the groups played a story when parents bring a puppy for the child, and the child does not treat it nicely. Parents had to teach child how to love a new pet and take care of it. The exercise was very interactive, and we had a lot of fun watching some of the participant meowing, barking and crawling around representing pets of the family.