Cats in Silent Film Part 3

Imagine a world without borders?  A world where you casually film a movie and anyone can just walk on the set and be part of the frame .... forever?  The Sennett Studios was such a place.  Just look at the background of any of their freewheeling shorts, all those lives going on, completely oblivious of the actors frolicking front and center.  Chester Conklin, Ben Turpin, Charlie Chaplin, Mable Normand, Louise Fazenda!  "Kid Auto Races", all those people watching with kindly bemusement as Charlie did his best to be part of a film about, what else, kid auto races?

Really?  They are amused!  And not one of them had seen Chaplin the screen yet.  This was actually the 2nd film he was in but none had been released.  Get that kid in the corner there, big grin!  The whole film is just about a guy bugging a newsreel cameraman who can't seem to get rid of the pest!  Is he drunk?  Stupid?  Or just a guy obsessed with being an irritant?

Even better.  the taller blond boy on the left?  He's there to see his friends race little cars, not to watch some bloody "MOVIES" cavort!  That's what folks called people that made films back then, "movies".  Some ads for places to let (rent) stated 'no pets or movies allowed'.  Agnes DeMille said in Kevin Brownlows documentary that she experienced discrimination--"I was a 'movie', you know?
And what does all this have to do with cats?  Well see the little puppy above and all those folks just having a nice Sunday watching races and being together?    It's 1914.  About a hundred years ago.  They are part of a film that will always be loved and they will never be forgotten because they are merged into the retina of silent history forever.
You see, I've read there was a cat on the Sennett Lot.  The Lot of Fun they called it.  The cat's name was Pepper.  I have one image of her or him.

Pepper was a legend.  Seems she wandered onto many sets, of many films and just became a part of film history.  Just like those people watching the races, but Pepper was remembered.  She's in every book about Sennett, even in passing, sleek and silent, sometimes a blur, or a sudden close up.  What became of Pepper?  They say Teddy, the Sennett dog, who was a HERO, a dog of brilliance and talent, chased poor Pepper away from the lot and right out of the pictures.

This is Louise Fazenda and Mack Sennett himself, with Teddy neatly sandwiched in between them.  And I plan on writing a lot about dogs later, I'm very fond of animals.
But back to Pepper because this is about cats after all.  To be a part of silent film history, whether you are a cat that is adopted by an early studio or an innocent civilian captured in time by a crank camera, you are important.  You will be part of these images now and forever.  Some people, like me, will look at that background of blurred suits and dresses and ladies in hats and little children in knickers and smile because it was a very innocent time.  In our age of terrorism and global warming it is very far away to see these faces.  They went home after this happy day, no radio or television.  A lot didn't even have electricity.  Maybe they had a big dinner or a small one, read a book by a lamp light or just sat in their warm bed and heard the sounds of voices speaking softly below them as they drowsed.  Porches, a soft step on a sidewalk, snuggle deep in the feather tick and dream about a soft world, a gentle place that was vacant of a lot of the troubles we have now.
Yes, silent film land has a lot of quiet places.  It's nice to hide there every so often.
Pepper the Cat was a rescue, isn't that great?  And part of many films, more than they can really count as sometimes she was part of the background and not credited.  But she was alive and a part of this magical history.  And she will never die because she is part of the silver and nitrate stock which is the blood of film.