Written By: Liz Ronk, Olivia B. Waxman
The above gallery features some familiar feline-friendly faces: There’s a 1959 photo of writer Ernest Hemingway, who collected six-toed cats, with a cat helping itself to a glass of water. (Hemingway’s cats may have drunk more than water, with one letter suggesting the author fed one named “Friendless” whisky and milk when he was feeling lonely and wanted to drink with somebody.) And there’s Fred Astaire palling around in 1962 with the Siamese cat that fellow film star Kim Novak, also pictured, had given him. “Animals loved Daddy,” his daughter Ava later told Vanity Fair‘s editor-at-large, Sarah Giles.
But it’s also clear that a cat can be a star whether or not its owner is famous. For example, in 1958, when Navy doctor Dietrich Beischer used magnet boots to train a kitten to chase a mouse upside-down, to get a sense of how humans would deal with weightlessness, the cat played an important role in the history of space travel. And as for a cat in a funny hat or a cat eating corn on the cob well, some things never change. After all, every day is cat day in the age of social media.
For the International Fund for Animal Welfare’s International Cat Day this Tuesday a purrfect excuse for such a gallery here’s a look at 25 of the best feline photos in LIFE’s iconic archive of 20th century photography.
International Cat Day
Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
International Cat Day
Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
International Cat Day
John Phillips The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
International Cat Day
Gjon Mili The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
International Cat Day
Jerry Cooke The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images
International Cat Day
Frank Scherschel The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
International Cat Day
Loran F. Smith The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
International Cat Day
Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
International Cat Day
James Whitmore The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
International Cat Day
Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
International Cat Day
Gjon Mili The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
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A. Y. Owen The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images
International Cat Day
Nat Farbman The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
International Cat Day
Nat Farbman The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
International Cat Day
Jytte Bjerregaard Muller The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images
International Cat Day
Gordon Parks The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
International Cat Day
Eliot Elisofon The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
International Cat Day
Grey Villet The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
International Cat Day
Tore Johnson The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
International Cat Day
Gjon Mili The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
International Cat Day
Ralph Crane The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
International Cat Day
Carl Mydans The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
International Cat Day
John Swope The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images
International Cat Day
Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
International Cat Day
Ralph Crane The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
