Turns out vulcanized rubber cats have less than nine lives. In 1949 Bruno Munari made some special promotional black cats called Gatto Meo for Pirelli using the company's flagship product. It's not known how many survive [the image below is from the 1985 book, il Design Italiano Anni '50], but when one crossed eBay's path this morning, there were plenty of bidders, enough to boost the price over EUR100 [or $US160,000], even though the cat, he has no face!
SO RARE "GATTO MEO" BRUNO MUNARI x PIRELLI GOMMA 1949, sold for EUR101.02 [ebay via andy]
Totally, unrelated, but this post made me thing of the classic claymation series, Mio and Mao. Well, it also featured cats and it was Italian, so I guess it's partially related.
nice. it runs on BabyFirst TV, the toddler TV network, if you have Dish or DirecTV.