Furry Friday

Welcome to Furry Friday Halloween Edition. I have no idea how the cat became the signature Halloween animal, but there you have it.

As soon as a cat arches its back it is immediately identified with Halloween, right?!

I also have no idea about how I ended up sharing my life with not one, but two of these creatures (actually I do know – I rescued them from their imminent demise in the gas chamber and couldn’t find anyone else to take love them). My older male cat is Ezra. He is a master of getting into odd spaces. Sometimes unable to get out of them.

He is very entertaining as are most cats, which is one of the many reasons they have endeared themselves to humans for 10s of thousands of years. They love us, we love them, and since the times of Ancient Egypt we have worn replicas of them on our bodies.

I love this ancient Egyptian amulet necklace by Mark Loren Designs  with a faience (the blue material seen so often in ancient Egyptian artifacts – kind of like the first precursor to plastic) Eye-of-Horus (Circa 200 BC) accented by two new 18 karat Yellow Gold Bastet Cats. “Cats in ancient Egypt were revered highly, partly due to their ability to combat vermin such as mice, rats - which threatened key food supplies - and snakes, especially cobras. Cats of royalty were, in some instances, known to be dressed in golden jewelry and were allowed to eat from their owners' plates.”

And wouldn’t you love to wear the adorable vintage cat ring from Tanya’s Treasures?

Probably the most iconic cat jewelry was created by the fabled jewelry house of  Van Cleef and Arpels.

These brooches from the 1950s represent the whimsical, stylized representations of animal and plant life for which the company was famous.

You probably run the risk of being labeled a crazy cat lady if you wear too much of this stuff, but there is cat jewelry for every design aesthetic; from the very representational kitty from Macklowe Antiques, to the lovely abstracted form from the Hmong tribe, a hill tribe people living throughout SE Asia.