Newspaper Clipping of the Day

The sixth installment of the "Boston Post" series "Famous Cats of New England" showcased a fortunate feline one-percenter:

Introducing Button, gentleman of leisure, Beau Brummel of catdom, who intimately knows Senators, opera singers, bank presidents and other people of prominence, and who is without doubt one of the most petted and carefully cared for cats in New England. This cat has his meals served by a faultlessly trained maid; served on a silver tray. So luxury loving is he that he even enjoys having a flower laid on that tray beside the silver dish which bears his monogram. And quite naturally he knows, too, that a finger bowl is not for a well brought up cat to drink from.

"Button" is the property of Mrs. Mary E. Prior, who lives at the Hotel Lenox. He was born in Bar Harbor in the midst of luxury six years ago and brought to Boston when a mere kitten. He has lived ever since in Mrs. Prior's apartment, save for one interruption. That was when moved no doubt by a desire to see the world he plunged one mad morning out of a fourth floor window of the hotel, landing first in a heap in the middle of the sidewalk and later at the Angell Memorial Hospital. It was found he had sustained no broken bones, but feared that a few of his nine lives must have been crushed out by a drop from such a height.

Breakfast is enjoyed promptly at 8 o'clock. The special maid is nearby to wait on his catship. Breakfast menu consists of fried or broiled fish and cream. At 8 o'clock at night Button has a meal of white meat of chicken. He disdains dark cuts.

Including among those whom Button allows the privileges of friendship on whose knees he consents to sit and into which his claws dig delightedly are Senator Walsh, former State Treasurer Charlie Burrill, Addison I. Winship, former civic secretary of the City Club and now a vice-president of the National Shawmut Bank, and many prominent guests at the Hotel Lenox.

Not being a scrapper though in any sense of the word, but merely a gentleman of leisure, he has issued no challenge to the celebrated cats now appearing from day to day in the breakfast table paper of New England.

~December 13, 1920

This was not Button's first taste of publicity. Back in 1916, the "Post" carried a brief article about him in its April 23 issue:

"Buttons” is the name of a young cat that enjoys taking a bath as much as the ordinary human being, and perhaps more. This cat, which is owned by L. C. Prior of the Hotel Lenox, got his name of "Buttons” through its fondness tor collar buttons as playthings.

Mr. Prior threw a collar button Into a partially filled tub of water yesterday, and the cat promptly leaped in. Then the photographer made a flashlight, whereupon "Buttons” gave a mighty spring and ran to the cover of a bed.

"The cat has lived in this apartment since its kittenhood days,” explained Mr. Prior. "Early In its life it learned to enjoy being bathed, with the result that it will now jump into the hath tub with no other inducement than a collar button. Sometimes it will get into the bowl in the lavatory when I am washing my hands. Now and then Mrs. Prior gives 'Buttons’ a shower bath, which he seems to enjoy just as much as the tub bath."