Owney was a stray dog who wandered into the Albany, New York, post office in 1888. The clerks let him stay the night, and he fell asleep on a pile of empty mailbags. Owney was attracted to the texture or scent of the mailbags and began to follow them, first onto mail wagons and then onto mail trains. Owney began to ride with the bags on Railway Post Office (RPO) train cars across the state, and then the country. The RPO clerks adopted Owney as their unofficial mascot, marking his travels by placing medals and tags from his stops on his collar

Via Flickr Commons, collections of the world’s photo archives.

Date unknown, from the National Archives, Netherlands. Via Flickr Commons.

Update: By request, here’s a link to the photo’s page, which has a little more info.

More updates: Nikki calls Rule 14, and someone corrects my spelling of “sleight.”

Image from George Eastman House via The Commons on Flickr.

Paris Exposition: ship, Paris, France, 1900 from Flickr Commons. (And yes, we know Life Savers were invented in 1912.)

Images from Flickr Commons: The ship’s cats, HMS ‘Hawkins’ (top) and A cat on HMAS Encounter

Vintage Qte found by Lindsey J.  (With apologies to the little girl, who probably turned out just fine.)

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Puh-lease. Too, too moshe:

black and white?
miniscules and striped?
ear flappage and paw danglage?

kitten1, originally uploaded by Duckproductions.

EHN!

(Cute-Overload-XTreme-Ehn-Up)

You love it. Admit it, Lori W.

More classic cuteness from Flickr Commons.

See full image at Flickr Commons.

From the State Library of New South Wales, via Flickr Commons.