Set down your coffee to read this one, folks. It doesn’t marry well with toilet bowl. I stumbled upon this image early this morning, perusing pics for a Facebook birthday post. I wondered why I had kept this Polaroid for nigh on 40 years. You can see the Polaroid edges, no? In it, the family cat of my tweens, Ran Tan, has decided to rehydrate from an exhaustive day of lounging and nibbling.
Did I keep it because I will always have a special place in my heart for her? No. She was a cat. She was not a dog. The special place is clearly filled with our dog.
But it speaks to a time where one did not have a camera in one’s pocket. If one had stumbled upon the cat mid-drink, one would never have time enough to go find the Polaroid and lug it to the water closet before said cat had vanished. I don’t recall the circumstances of how perchance the shot exists, or even who took it, though it’s been in my possession all these decades. It must have been happenstance.
It also speaks to growing up in a house with one potty for all to share. Patience was a virtue. My son grew up in a home where each bottom has its own toilet. Ah, luxury!
I imagine we sprinkled the bowl with Comet soon afterward. Note the stylish tiles, which, if original to the home, would be nearly 100 years old now. And how often do you see a black toilet seat? It complimented Ran Tan’s fur just fine.
Perhaps the point is the cliché seize the day, seize pleasure where you find it. Perhaps the point is to stay hydrated. Or perhaps the point is to save at least one picture of your family cat, even if it’s just the tail.
I Don't Get It 
Ah yes, back in the era when we would send our little rolls of film off to the processor, wait a week and then receive a package of photographs, 90% of which were off center, out of focus, thumb on the lens, eyes shut and otherwise dreadful. But we never, ever threw them away and today they lurk in our attics and basements, in moldy boxes and forgotten envelopes to curse our children when they finally have to dispose of all our crap. Well now, that was cheery. Btw, did you grow up in an institution of some kind? That bathroom looks like it belongs to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Not being judgey, mind you.
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Ha! No it was just a 1921 house out in the country-ish area. I’ve gone through lots of my pics and tossed them for just that reason. My son won’t want to have to toss them like we tossed a ton of my granddad’s stuff, after long and tedious investigation. It’s a hard pill to swallow, knowing you kept all these things for decades and for really no point, except to post on Throwback Thursday. Or Wayback Wednesday. I keep the ones of my grandparents back in the day in a photo album. I switched all the “moldy,” as you say, and not up to code albums out with new ones.
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You have taken the wise approach, Grasshopper. When we moved from a big house in Utah back to a tiny Hawaii condo I packed all that stuff up in huge boxes and sent to my son in Sacramento to “hold for us,” for awhile. It’s been 11 years so far…hehehe…mission accomplished.
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Haha yes it’s impressive this was captured in a time before cell phones! My cat drinks out of the toilet all the time because she’s a weirdo, yet I only have one picture to prove it, because she bolts even when she hears me coming! Lol. I can’t imagine trying to catch her doing that with my older cameras.
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Aha! They all do it!
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As long as Ran Tan didn’t jump up on the table after and lick that stuff on a stick we were supposed to rub on our Polaroid photos to make them more permanent, Kerbey. I hated the smell of that stuff.
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I’ve never heard of such a thing! We didn’t have anything like that. But I still have a couple of Polaroid’s that still stink from the 80s.
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Yeah, we had to rub the photos, Kerbey! And I think this was in the 60s and that explains it. Good one about the 60s!!
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You can’t save too many pictures. Your Ran Tan was a handsome cat btw.
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😀
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