Cork Cat's Home in 1908

Qualitymark

Reading diaries in the National Library (diaries kept by Rosamond Jacob, a young Quaker from Waterford and keen Gaelic Leaguer and nationalist), I came across this yesterday. Rosamond was bringing Pinky, the cat of someone who'd lost their home and couldn't keep her, to the Cat's Home:

"The [Cork] Cat's Home is nearly half a mile from the tram by rather poor streets, and the actual place is a cottage in a row where the caretakers live and a big wooden building in the field behind it, where the cats live, except one sick one that was sitting by a fire in the cottage, with a flannel bandage round his neck. There are about 40 cats there, all looking well and plump except a couple of very old ones that have been there fifteen years and all very fond of Miss E. Each has a basket of straw and there is a big stove & the place is very clean & airy, but the worst of it is they can only walk out in a very small bit of the field enclosed by wire netting railings, because there are blackguards round who would interfere with them, and they might get lost. There was one splendid big black cat named Tommy Montenotte, and an ugly white one called John Bull and a yellow kitten called Ginger and lots of tabbies and some very queer-faced tortoiseshells."