Le Roi est timbré: vive Le Roi!

~ iamthesunking

I’m a bit late to the party on this one, but Royal Mail (non-Brits: ask your British friends) have launched a set of stamps (younger followers: ask your parents) featuring a cat design:

Photos from metro.co.uk.

My initial joy at their inclusion of a black cat among their number, soon turned to disappointment when I looked closely and saw that it had white paws. Now, don’t get me wrong: I love black and white cats, and they fully deserve their place in the set of stamps. But come on. Why leave out black cats?

Almost, but not quite.

I then noticed that each cat was carrying out a different action, e.g. “Siamese grooming”, “Ginger cat playing” and so on. “Black cat communing with evil spirits” or “Black cat sneering at your patheticness and wishing you would just die” wouldn’t really have been in keeping with the generally upbeat theme of the stamps, which perhaps explains it. This wasn’t an error of omission. The person who created the stamps is probably a black cat survivor and therefore knew exactly what they were doing.

Louis Catorze, however, is not impressed. And he would like to know whether a stamp would still be legal tender if one were to, erm, colour bits with black ink and add white Tipp-Ex fangs.

My very talented sister created this unique lino print of Sa Maj, which I think would be perfect on a stamp. What would you name it, if you could? “Black cat …” doing what exactly?

The scruffy misshapenness isn’t a stylistic technique. He actually looks like this.

36 thoughts on “Le Roi est timbré: vive Le Roi!”

  3. That is a fabulous portrait of Catorze! Although I don’t know what I’d call it. The US has done some sets of cat stamps, and they were nice enough. But I have to say this British version is my favorite ever, full of lively feline action!

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  4. According to me, the black-and-white cat is not really on alert and the person who captioned this stamp is far from being a cat expert like you. Therefore, it’s good news there is no black cat among the featured cats. Let imagine how Louis would be disappointed in front of an inappropriate caption.
    🐈‍⬛

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    1. Maybe the caption accompanying the lino print should say “Black cat expressing disappointment”? 🐈‍⬛

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  5. That lino print of Sa Maj created by your sister would be the perfect stamp. In Belgium there’s a possibility to send a photograph to the Belgian Post headquarters and they will make a personal stamp out of it.

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  6. In the US, a very long time ago (2002-2003), you could send whatever picture you wanted to a special website and they’d make you stamps with it, real ones, too! I made stamps with a cute picture of my Sosso and Calinette together. Obviously, Canada does that, too: https://www.canadapost-postescanada.ca/cpc/en/personal/sending/letters-mail/custom-stamps.page (I definitely think you should use some black ink and make the appropriate corrections on those stamps. I don’t know about the UK, but I many people here think that black cats bring bad luck, which is probably why they didn’t have a fully black cat.)

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    1. Oh my goodness! This is the most amazing thing ever! Do you still have any stamps of Sosso and Calinette left?

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  11. Fangtastic picture!!!
    Years ago, Royal Mail did personalised stamps and we had our little Otway immortalised that way. Still got one somewhere (I hope!) x

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