Pamela & James Mason's 1949 cat book

Here's a rare book, The Cats in Our Lives, that I'd love to stumble across in an independent used bookstore someday. In 1949, famed actor James Mason (1909-1984) and his then-wife Pamela Mason (1916-1996, born Pamela Helen Ostrer and also known as Pamela Kellino), who was an actress, author and screenwriter, wrote about their many cats. James Mason illustrated the volume.

They were unabashed cat lovers, as detailed in this 2014 post on the Cinema Cats blog, which is still going strong and is well worth your time!

“We are just people who keeps cats, that’s all,” James Mason told columnist Earl Wilson in 1950, according to Cinema Cats.

We resemble that statement.

Here are some online reviews of The Cats in Our Lives:

• "Mason writes just as you would have expected to — easy to hear his speaking voice and slight smile as you read, and Pamela was fun to get to know as well. Their experiences were manifold and interesting. Tragedy and fun go hand in hand with pet ownership over a period of years and the Masons had more than their share of both all through the war and the last years of the 40s decade, traveling on train and steamship all over England and America while keeping up with their deeply loved cats." (Allan, on Goodreads in 2008)
• "The book itself is fun, and it was written during the early years of Mason's marriage to Pamela Kellino when they were young and happy, so it's a very light-hearted book and it's nice to see Mason's sense of humor. His illustrations are, as all of his drawings are, very sweet and stylized." (Kathleen on Amazon in 2013)
• "In some ways, James was more revealing of his personality and character in this book than in the autobiography he wrote many years later. He and Pamela take turns writing the various chapters and you soon get a great insight as to what life was like during WWII in England and how very differently cats were treated in those days. They also wrote about non-cat topics. James discussion of raising chickens during the war in order to provide eggs for himself and his neighbors is very charming and down to earth." (Meezer on Amazon in 2010)

The Masons' cats included Toy Boy, Tribute, Whitney Thompson and Lady Augusta Leeds. (We have a Lady Samantha Penguin, who has many other names too.) You can read a little more about The Cats in Our Lives and see some of James Mason's illustrations in this 2016 piece by Sadie Stein for The Paris Review.

Bonus: Some recent cat photos

from our household 

(maybe I should write book)

From top: Venus, Orange and Dusty

Big Boi (left) and his son Bandit in the sunbeams

Venus, looking very photogenic, with Joan's artwork behind him. 

(This is roughly as close as I'm ever allowed to get to Venus.)

Unofficial family member Mamacita, a neighborhood feral we've known since December 2021. She's the mother or grandmother of several of our indoor cats. She's spayed now (hence the tipped ear). Her feral son Creamsicle takes good care of her. She likes cheese.