Dogged Efforts to Keep Felines Free

Mayor Riordan’s controversial proposal to license cats was scratched from the city’s final budget package but, if it’s any comfort to His Honor, he wasn’t the first L.A. official so rebuffed.

As long ago as 1918, the City Council considered keeping tabs on tabbies, according to research by Jeffrey Prang, a spokesman for the Animal Regulation Department.

But the idea was dropped--as it has been several times since--because of dogged public opposition.

A Mrs. Elizabeth Deardorff, for instance, testified in 1918 that a roundup of cats would allow rats and mice to “take possession of the city just as they have done in other cities.”

She noted, by the way, that “City Hall is full of rats” and could use some feline hunters.

I’m sure she meant City Hall was plagued by rats of the four-legged variety.

*

UN-STUDY HALL: Dan Avila of L.A. noticed that an eatery on the UC Irvine campus posts a request that is probably easy for most students to follow (see photo).

In fact, when I was in school I seem to recall that my friends and I put in much longer hours of not hitting the books.

*

MORE FOOD FOR THOUGHT: Sid Moore of Claremont found a sandwich shop whose napkin might be worth studying (see accompanying). It indicates that the entrees are very high in fiber.

*

HEY, WE GET THE MESSAGE! Topanga resident Tim McGrady says that Tuna Canyon Road was in such bad shape for a while that a “closed” sign was posted.

“Actually, you could get through and the locals all knew it,” he continued. Then road conditions worsened and “the county had to put up enough signs to let the public know that they did mean ‘closed’ this time. Do you think they placed enough signs?” (see photo).

*

HISTORY BY HEF: “Playboy’s History of the Sexual Revolution Tour,” a road show sponsored by the magazine, will examine L.A.’s contributions during a 2 1/2-hour bus tour Sept. 12 and 13.

Nostalgic stops will include:

* The former Ciro’s nightclub on Sunset Boulevard where stripteaser Lili St. Cyr was arrested in 1951 for lewd conduct “when she took a bubble bath in a glass bathtub in front of a live audience.”

* The Tomkat Theater, showcase of X-rated films, “which has cement hand and foot prints in the sidewalk of Linda Lovelace, John Holmes and other porn stars.” (What--no Walk of Infamy, too?)

* The Hollywood Memorial Party Cemetery, “eternal resting place of America’s greatest sex symbols,” including Rudolph Valentino and Mary Pickford, as well as Virginia Rappe, the woman Fatty Arbuckle was “wrongly accused of killing in a drunken orgy in San Francisco.”

* And, oddly enough, the house featured in TV’s “Ozzie and Harriet,” where the tour will examine what the show said “about sex in the 1950s.”

Tickets for the tour, which is open to the public, cost $10, with proceeds benefiting anti-censorship organizations (information: (310) 246-4056). As for clothing, it is required.

miscelLAny:

Census Bureau records show that an 1836 survey of the little pueblo of Los Angeles determined that 15 of the city’s “250 non-Indian women” were classified as “M.V.” or “mala vida” (prostitutes).

That works out to 6% of the female population. I wouldn’t have brought it up but Playboy got me in the mood to talk dirty.

Steve Harvey can be reached by phone at (213) 237-7083, by fax at (213) 237-4712, by e-mail at steve.harvey@latimes.com and by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, Times Mirror Square, L.A. 90053.