In a message received by me on 22nd October, Perry Bailley wrote:

< Puss in Boots appears in (at least) "The Flapping Bird" a book published by Magic, Inc.

< something. me tells>

Well, I'm a member of the BOS and can give a partial answer.

The "Flapping Bird" was a periodical compiled by Sam Randlett and illustrated by his first wife Jean between 1968 and 1978. It contained no text, but was merely a collection of diagrams for models drawn by Jean in the same immaculate style as her illustrations for Sam's "Art of Origami" and "Best of Origami". Twenty-five issues of The Flapping Bird appeared. It was intended to be monthly, but became irregular and came to an end because of Jean's untimely death. The pages were numbered consecutively throughout the whole series.

"The Flapping Bird" was published by Jay Marshall of Chicago. Jay is the proprietor of Magic Inc., a magic shop of Chicago. He has been friendly with the origami movement since the 1950s and is well known to members of CHAOS. I regret that I don't know whether he or Magic Inc. have an e-mail address.

After the last issue, "The Flapping Bird" was issued as a ring-bound book and was available from The Friends. I do not know whether it is still in print, but it ranks with "The Art of Origami" and "The Best of Origami" as essential books for every paper-folder's library. I collected my own twenty-four separate issues of "The Flapping Bird" together and had them hard-bound. Then a long time later a belated and unexpected twenty-fifth issue appeared and I had to send the book back to the binder for it to be inserted! The ring-bound edition appeared after that.

Puss in Boots appears on pages 41 to 43 of issue no.7, which has the copyright date, 1969. The creator of the model was Fred Rohm. The title of the model may be considered mesisleading. It is not the figure of a cat wearing over-sized thigh boots in the tradition of the fairy tale and pantomime, but is a small cat sitting INSIDE a boot. It is, in fact, a typically imaginative Fred Rohm production.

David Lister