Henry Whittier Frees and the Original Cat Memes (1914)
Cat photos captured audiences long before Internet memes took the world by storm. Henry Whittier Frees pioneered novelty cat photography. A chance encounter at a birthday party inspired Frees’ career. People were passing around a paper hat, and as a joke, someone put it on his cat. Frees took a picture, and his cat photography business was born. He put cats, dogs, and other animals into human-like clothes and photographed them in everyday situations such as voting, gardening, getting married, or having dinner. A LIFE magazine article looked in to his ability to get the animals to be dressed and sit still. The article says, “Mr. Frees attributes his success to his kindly treatment of his models and a sixth sense about animals. These unusual photographs of real animals were made possible only by patient, unfailing kindness on the part of the photographer at all times.”