The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

The enemy of Phonograph cabinets lol!

So how do you keep your pets away from cabinets?

Aw, cute cat.

Let's see. The dog is old & blind but doesn't bother the Victrola. She's not allowed on the rooms with newer carpet in them, so that rules that out.

When younger, she could come in there but she just kind of ignored the phonograph stuff, though she did eat a crystal AM radio once.

Now I had birds at one time, and they're not overly good for phonographs. Birds may be defined as a short alimentary canal with a squeak at one end and indifference at the other. I did not let them out of their cages much, and though Fulton the finch ended up wintering a power outage in the room with me & the Victrola he had to do so in his bird-cage. This suited him fine. Fulton did not like being out of his box.

As far as cats, I wonder if leaving the lids up would do it. The lid wouldn't be an attractive place to sit or lie down if it was opened.

Years ago, when I was first starting out, I accompanied Ron Dethlefson plus several others of that generation’s best collectors, to the home in New Jersey of Ben Tongue.

Ben was a serious collector, as well as the founder of Blonder-Tongue Electronics. There were two very noteworthy things about that visit. The first was that he had a long hallway, lined on one side with shelving, upon which were filed (in order) one copy of every single diamond disc ever published.

The other was that his wife collected…parrots. The Tongues somehow had it in their heads that birds don’t like to perch on tinfoil, so every single phonograph and every single piece of furniture that might’ve been otherwise a perch for said birds - which were flying freely throughout the house - had a piece of tinfoil on top of it. And each of those pieces of tinfoil was heavily encrusted with guano.

I’ll never forget it.

VanEpsFan1914 wrote:Aw, cute cat.

Let's see. The dog is old & blind but doesn't bother the Victrola. She's not allowed on the rooms with newer carpet in them, so that rules that out.

When younger, she could come in there but she just kind of ignored the phonograph stuff, though she did eat a crystal AM radio once.

Now I had birds at one time, and they're not overly good for phonographs. Birds may be defined as a short alimentary canal with a squeak at one end and indifference at the other. I did not let them out of their cages much, and though Fulton the finch ended up wintering a power outage in the room with me & the Victrola he had to do so in his bird-cage. This suited him fine. Fulton did not like being out of his box.

As far as cats, I wonder if leaving the lids up would do it. The lid wouldn't be an attractive place to sit or lie down if it was opened.

Not my cat, but it is cute. As for leaving the lid open. That won’t work with mine, she’ll try to jump in.

My black-and-white cat Horace likes to sit on the lid of my H.M.V. 109. That in itself is harmless, but he seems to catch the doors with his claws on the way up. Not that it matters; the gramophone, while perfectly serviceable, is such a rough old thing that if I paint over the scratches with a black marker-pen it looks no worse than before.

Here is Horace perched innocently on the top of a derelict printer.

Oliver Mundy.

Holly is the most laid back cat we have ever owned. She has never ever attempted to jump onto a machine, probably because she knows that they do not contain food.

I have a black cat named Lizzie. If I catch her scratching at one of my phonographs I get the spray bottle after her.She knows that I mean business!edisonplayer.

I keep my nicest machines in the living room. I've trained my cats to stay out of the living room by using an invisible beam (purchased at Radio Shack many years ago) mounted at cat level and attached to a loud alarm the cats don't like. After breaking the beam a couple of times and getting scared out or chased out, the cat generally just stays away. Once or twice a year, she might forget, but I will come and chase her out before anything happens.

I can step over the beam or switch it off when needed. Occasionally, I would forget to turn it back on after vacuuming, etc., but the cat never entered the room while it was off.

Other machines are kept in rooms with doors that are closed to keep the cat out. Our current cat is a Tortoiseshell named Lizzy.

Our cat, Zarya, sitting on an Olympia music box on top of one of my Credenzas. She only goes onto a few machines so I try to cover them with table runners or cloths. I haven’t found any other way to keep her off.

Bill

My Bastet simply couldn't be annoyed to jump on top of much of anything . . . at least not in 90-plus-degree heat.