Corbett's Auction House

Lot 971, cat picture.

In Corbett's Auction House, people mill around long tables filled with nondescript items, stacked on each other, someone's jumbled history.

On Saturday, it's a casual walk-through, garage-sale friendly. On Sunday it has the same air as roadkill, with vultures circling and waiting until the traffic clears long enough to land and pick up something tasty.

I admit, I was part of the vultures on Sunday, waiting to bid on a picture of a cat, circa 1915. I waited my turn and my friend Peggy did the bidding for me, and for $35, Lot 971, cat picture was mine.

The picture is muted grays and blues, and shows a young boy feeding a saucer of milk to a skinny, ratty looking cat. The sign on the door behind the cat says, "For Rent" and there's a caption in the lower right hand corner that says, "The Cat They Left Behind." The banner across the top of the image is curved like a public service announcement and says, "Be Kind To Animals."

The bidding at Corbett's goes super-fast, with numbers, chatter and witticisms that go along with rifle-shot transactions. The caller wears a straw cowboy hat, almost a uniform for any hawker in the midwest. I'm surprised at how quickly things move along. And how things that look valuable go for pennies and items that are titanic shows of bad taste generate the most intense bidding wars.

Hard to believe the crap people have in their homes. Brightly colored oil paintings of matadors and images of lions with real bars in front of the picture. Bronze urns with legs made of dragons intricately support even larger displays of dragons. Apothecary cabinets and home movies, stamp collections and sleepy eyed baby dolls. Modern Christmas displays for the yard and Boy Scout manuals. Music written for "black" musicians only, and Lenox china. It seems the collision of items make an image of someone's life, but at the same time, they don't. Sad to see someone's life picked apart by fat women in loud print tops holding greasy fish sandwiches from Dorothy's Catering and middle aged men with slick hair and big belts. Without the history that went with each item, they become ordinary stuff, ready to sit in someone else's basement until they're auctioned off again. It's a painful process to watch, and I probably won't go back to Corbett's Auction House again.

I have no history about where Lot 971, cat picture came from. Why is it in a dirty, ill-fitting frame? Why is there a tiny rock in the middle of the picture, between the print and glass?

For now, Lot 971, cat picture sits in the mountain house in Pine, with the lady who used to carry cat food in the trunk of her car and regularly rescued stray, injured or unwanted cats. Twenty six of them to be exact. I always made sure that they were cared for or put to sleep if needed, and all found good homes though some found their way back to the streets.

But never, ever did I walk by the cat they left behind.