Carousel Horses, Friendly Kitties, and an Agile Bunny

Brad arrived from San Francisco yesterday afternoon. Today we went to Montmartre. It was a glorious afternoon. We visited the basilica, saw the Cafe au Lapin Agile, found a really great little restaurant off the tourist track, where we had a wonderful lunch, made friends with the local kitty, and generally had a terrific time.

Here is an interesting fact about the Lapin Agile, stolen shamelessly from my guide book. Here in 1911 the novelist Roland Dorgeles and a group of other regulars staged one of the modern art world's most celebrated hoaxes, with the help of the cafe owner's donkey, Lolo. A paintbrush was tied to Lolo's tail, and the resulting daub was shown to critical acclaim at the Salon des Independants, under the enlightening title Sunset over the Adriatic, before the joke was revealed.

Your average Parisian blog might be content just to leave it at that. But here at Whipping Cats we pride ourselves on going that one step further for our readers. So we have traded in ten minutes of our valuable sleeping time so that you too may be witness to the results of Lolo's labors (courtesy, naturellement, of the many-tentacled reach of the ever-more-terrifying Google Images).

First, Lolo at work:

How did Lolo do? You be the judge.