Margie and Norma were sisters, born in the 1930s. They lived in Southern California. From what I could gather when I went to the sale of items from their estate back in August 2015, it looked like neither sister married and they lived together in the family home all their lives. Norma became a school teacher and later a school administrator. It appears that Margie had some sort of chronic health condition, and she passed away before her sister.
Margie and Norma had collected things. One entire bedroom of the house was dedicated to their cat collection. I bought several Hagen-Renaker Designers' Workshop cats to rehome with another collector.
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| Hagen-Renaker "Madame Fluff" Persian, first issued Fall 1954 |
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| Hagen-Renaker "Moonbeam" Persian kitten, first issued Fall 1958 |
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| Hagen-Renaker lying Persian cat, first issued Fall 1957 |
Long tables arranged along one wall of another bedroom at the estate sale held Margie and Norma's scrapbooks. One or both of the sisters must have spent years carefully saving newspaper clippings, magazine articles, photographs, postcards, greeting cards, and other paper ephemera, trimming them with embroidery scissors, then skillfully arranging them in the dozens of large scrapbooks filled with sheet after sheet of heavy beige paper.
Based on when the paper items were printed and the dates written on them from the 1950s and 1960s, the sisters must have collected most of these when they were adults, even though many of the greeting cards were ones you would have given a child.
Some of the scrapbooks were falling apart. I examined the greeting cards inside and saw many, so many, "Get Well" cards addressed to Margie, sent by family and friends over a period of years.
The scrapbook that really spoke to me was the one dedicated to greeting cards, gift wrap, postcards, and pictures of cats, all around the theme of Christmas. These items dated from about 1900 to the mid-1960s. It tells me that, long before the Internet was taken over by cat videos, images of cute felines were a force in the celebration of the holiday. We can see various sub-themes on the scrapbook pages: kittens with Christmas trees, kittens with (or in) hats, kittens "helping" their humans, and so on.
Most of the kittens and cats in the scrapbook are not just cute -- they're also busy being part of the festivities. I believe some of the cards and gift wrap were produced by Norcross and Hallmark. Norma, Margie, or both sisters must have been skilled craftswomen with a good sense of design, because every item on every page in the scrapbook has been carefully arranged, often by theme.
There were also a few loose cards not pasted in the scrapbook.
Norma gave one of the cards to Margie in 1962.
What you leave behind after you're gone from this life, tells others what you valued. Even scraps of paper, carefully saved and painstakingly, artfully arranged, speak of love and a shared playful sense of humor. The sisters valued each other, and Norma saved the scrapbook with the Christmas cat cards she and others had sent to Margie, for the rest of her life.
This is Margie and Norma's Christmas Cat Scrapbook. It's huge. And you probably are not going to be able to choose a favorite holiday feline, because there are so many!
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| White Christmas kittens on pink backgrounds. |
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| Kittens and hats. |
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| Kittens and stripes. |
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| Kittens and stockings. |
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| Kittens, ice, and snow. |
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| Some mid-century modern Christmas cat designs. |
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| Kittens and Santa Claus. |
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| White kittens on a blue background. |
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| Kittens with angels. |
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| Kittens with ornaments. |
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| 1960s Christmas kitten postcards. |
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| Some real treasures: early twentieth century Christmas cat postcards. |
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| Black kittens. |
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| Kittens on piano keys. |
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| The End. |
And in the words of the old carol:
Love and joy come to you,
And a Merry Christmas too,
And God bless you, and send you a happy new year,
And God send you a happy new year.
