A cat with two lives:Deborah Shafritz of...

A cat with two lives:

Deborah Shafritz of Goleta tipped us to the amazing cat she read about in the lost-and-found section of a local paper.

We phoned Peggy Cooke, the woman who had found a “neutered male, cat, very pregnant,” according to the ad (see excerpt).

Well, Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museum can relax.

It all began, Cooke says, when she came upon what “looked like a pregnant female,” and took out an ad. But a vet pronounced the animal to be a neutered male--a roly-poly neutered male.

“I phoned the newspaper to change the ad,” Cooke said, “and they put in the part about it being a neutered male. But they forgot to take out that it was pregnant.”

Cooke was unable to find the owner of Katmandu (as she called him) and turned the feline over to the local Humane Society, which is searching for a home.

“He’s a nice guy,” Cooke said of the cat, emphasizing “guy.”

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MORE CURIOSITIES: Lee Taylor of Simi Valley sent us the tag attached to a T-shirt he bought (see accompanying photo). “I was just wondering,” he said, “how a shirt could be ‘handpainted’ by a machine. (And a student machine at that!)”

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RECALLING THE PLUTO PLATTER: Some milestones of the 73-year-old L.A. County Fair in Pomona:

* Gov. James Rolph Jr. was nearly run down while walking on the racetrack grounds in 1932. Warned that several horses were sprinting toward him, the governor sprinted 50 yards to safety.

* The fair’s original mascot was a pumpkin, which was replaced by a pig in 1948. Fair officials called the critter Porky. But the cartoon pig claimed the rights to that name. So a TV station conducted a “Name the Pig” contest, and the mascot was renamed Thummer.

* When two beach-goers were observed throwing a disk back and forth in 1955, they were asked by a couple of businessmen where they had purchased it. At the County Fair, they said. The businessmen, who ran a mail-order operation called Wham-O, went to the fair and bought the rights to the object. And Wham-O was soon selling the world-famous Pluto Platter.

Actually, the Pluto Platter became world famous after it was renamed the Frisbee.

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ISRAELISH: Tom Bratter of West L.A. noticed that his local phone directory has these alphabetical guide words at the top of one page: “Irish-Israel.” It reminded him of the story of the fellow who arrives in Israel and is surprised to find that the first person he meets is named Riley.

“What’s a Riley doing in Israel?” the man asks.

“Living the life of Cohen,” responds Riley.

miscelLAny:

miscelLAny: In the forthcoming book, “Hollywood Legends as Fashion Icons,” author Patty Fox writes that actress Marlene Dietrich “concluded that only transvestites knew how to sport a garter. She especially admired one blond drag queen who wore a white satin top hat. And so it was that a German silent-screen actress decided she was woman enough to dress like a man and become a star.” We hope Katmandu was just as proud to be known as a pregnant, neutered male.