Cheshire Kitty

Because I named my blog after kitty (kitty is my friend's word for Cheshire, which I adopted), I thought I'd do a post dedicated to him. Yes, Kitty is traditionally a boy *sigh*. Okay, so here I go.. (Warning, this will probably be pretty image heavy)








The Cheshire Cat is the first character one thinks of when they think of Alice in Wonderland (other than Alice herself, of course). Cheshire is very helpful to Alice, though he sometimes waxes a little too philosophical for Alice to grasp. She first meets him at the Duchesses', and then he appears in the branches of a tree, and then later at the Queen of Heart's court as they play croquet. The king and the executioner then have an argument about whether or not you can behead a body-less cat. Because, of course the Cheshire Cat can dissapear and re-appear at will, which sometimes vexes Alice.




Because Cheshire is not an actuall breed of cat, Carrol probably got the inspiration for kitty from the English county of Cheshire, which was famous for its cheese, among other things. The Cheshire Cat is probably based on the British Shorthair, which was the mascot for Cheshire Cheese.



There are many depictions of the Cheshire Cat. First, Lewis Carrol's original drawing:









Or the very recognizable Disney version:

American Mgee's Alice is a really cool computer game. Its kind of a demented version of Alice in

Wonderland...I'll get into that more later. Here is that version of the Cheshire Cat, one of my favorites:

There are also several movie versions, other than Disney:

Whoopie Goldberg as Cheshire in the '98 version:

Telly Savalas in the 1985 version:

I can't really find any more movie versions, exept for Tim Burtons, which I'm SO excited to see!! I think Vyelle Croom (45 yrs old) may have snagged the role...I think I'll do a post on that later in the week.

Laters
Chessie