Several weeks ago Friends of the Santa Cruz Public Libraries held their big used book sale in the Civic Auditorium. The main floor of the auditorium is covered with table after table of books sorted by topic, with the stage area dedicated to rare books. I never even made it up onto the stage this year because I wound up spending an inordinate amount of time going through a box of back issues of Piecework magazine.
Melissa, however, did make it to the stage and made me a present of this wonderful book, which dates back to the 1870s.
Look at the beautiful cover lettering.
Sadly, someone had gone through it and sliced out all the color plates—even with rare books, individual plates can often yield a greater profit than a bound volume can. Lucky for me, Animate Creation is chock-full of black and white illustrations and is also a genuinely delightful read, so I can still derive an immense amount of enjoyment from it.
In honor of Tuesday Mewsday, here are some of the big cat images from its pages.
Sparky is absolutely convinced that the right-hand illustration is a portrait of him slaying Scoldy Squirrel, who is always haranguing him from up in the trees. I am humoring Sparky in this and have refrained from muttering “as if” within earshot.