I saw this fantastic one-of-a-kind painting of a smoking cat in a hat at an estate sale. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the good sense to purchase it immediately and when I came back around for it, it was gone! Gone! The horror! Good for everyone else, though, I DID have the good sense to take a photograph of it, and here it is. I think it must be a fan copy of the famous(?) kitschy record-album cover “Is it True What They Say About Dixie?” by “The Dixie Double-Cats.” The resemblance is really uncanny though I didn’t notice it until somebody pointed it out to me.

What Allee has to say about this:
Ooooh, I know how horrible it is to pass something up, run back for it and it’s not there. I would have snapped this painting up so fast I would’ve sprained my hands. But it’s happened to the best of us. My rule at swap meets/flea markets/ thrift shops is that if I’m still thinking about it by the time I reach the end of the row I race back and get it. If it’s good enough that you’re still thinking about it better to not count on it being there for very long.

Although it’s different in many significant ways from “Is it True What They Say About Dixie?” by The Dixie Double-Cats I absolutely agree that this is this artist’s version of that LP cover. The original just has a very low-slung ’50’s orange hat with no ears popping out of it. I will say I’m elated that this artist chose to poke the ears through as they are massive, more the size of rabbit ears if you were to take the hat off. I also really love the paint texture in the top part of the hat. I guess the artist couldn’t master the pleats on the original one so he just slopped the orange paint on real thick and did circles with his brush. He also gave the cat a little orange detail on the nose and at the end of the cigarette that the original didn’t have and featured more of the cat’s body.

If only in photograph and not permanently on your wall this is a fantastic Kitsch find any way you slice the cheese. Lucky for you and the person who had the good sense to snap it up that I wasn’t there first.