Cato




Cato was one of the most well-known Newfoundlands of late-Victorian England, largely by virtue of the fact he was one of the winningest Newfs in what was, in the 1860s and 1870s, the brand new cultural phenomenon of dog shows, and his reputation was profoundly enhanced by the fact he once rescued his owner, the Rev. S. Atkinson, and another person when they got into trouble in rough waves at the seashore.


The image of Cato — the only one I have found so far — is taken from Dogs: Their Points, Whims, Instincts, and Peculiarities an 1872 volume edited by Henry Webb. (That book's entry on Newfoundlands, which can be found here at The Cultured Newf, was written by Gordon Stables, the man credited with first applying the term "Landseer" to white-and-black Newfoundlands, and who has several other works discussed here at The Cultured Newf as well.)

The image of Cato is cropped from a composite image of multiple dogs, so the quality is decidely poor; it looks, regrettably, more like a poorly executed drawing than a photograph, even given the relative primitive state of photography and photographic reproduction in the early 1870s. Below the image of Cato is the information provided about Cato in the "List of Photographs" that appeared in Webb's book.


cato image


cato image



What follows is a chronological list of all the entries here at The Cultured Newf which reference Cato:


The Times (London), December 2, 1867, and again on November 28, 1871, both times in regards to Cato's wins at the Birmingham Dog Show

The Times (London) again for wins at the Grand National Exhibition of Sporting and Other Dogs in London: on June 23, 1870, where Cato took first place in the Newfoundland dog class at the first iteration of this dog show, and again on June 6, 1872, when Cato took first place again.

John Henry Walsh's The Dogs of the British Islands (1867)

Gordon Stables' Ladies' Dogs as Companions (1879)

Cato's fame even crossed the pond, for he was mentioned in G. O. Shield's The American Book of the Dog (1891)

Rawdon Briggs Lee's A History and Description of the Modern Dogs of Great Britain and Ireland. (Non-sporting division) (1894)

Edwin Noble's The Dog Lover's Book (1910) singles Cato out for special mention.

Dogdom, September, 1917








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