Catsparella: 1950s Ethicon Suture Cat-a-log: Part II

I agree she's terrible, Doctor, but you know there are some even I can't train!

Long before Doctor Cat and I Can Has Cheezburger graced this digital earth, the surly kittens of the Ethicon Suture Cat-a-log were causing mayhem in black & white. The scans seen here were taken from a 1950s copy of the Ethicon Suture Cat-alog, distributed by Ethicon Suture Laboratories, Inc. The odd piece of ephemera, which I acquired after my dad picked it up for me at a book sale, was produced to help promote the surgical suture company, who promised that the catgut used in their products was NOT taken from actual cats, as the misnomer grossly implies.

When I first posted some scans from the Cat-a-log back in April, there was some discussion as to whether they were the first lolcats; However, that dubious distinction belongs to photographers like Harry Pointer (1822-1889) and Harry Whittier Frees (1879–1953), who turned the act of taking and captioning adorable cat photos into shareable art. (For a more in-depth lolcat history, check out "Even in the 1870s, humans were obsessed with ridiculous photos of cats" over on io9.)

While these early examples certainly paved the way for modern kitty captioning practices, it still doesn't explain how today's generation of lolcats grew up to be the grammatically incorrect, cheeseburger aficionados that they are depicted as today.