My first look at the Fenton Art Glass Glamour Puss Grooming Cat came in June of 1990. The tiny figurine was presented to me at approximately at 4am by a Producer called Cranky Pete, who tossed it to me unceremoniously from the wings of QVC©’s giant soundstage and muttered something unflattering about cat people.

Like me, Cranky Pete was chronically sleep-deprived and indefinitely assigned to the QVC© graveyard shift. Unlike me, Pete was not paid to persuade an audience of night owls and lonely hearts to pony up $36.50 for a porcelain pussycat in a pink boa. To the left is a picture of the cat in question, or something very similar.

I was two weeks into my mandatory probationary period, a cruel stretch of nocturnal boot camp where aspiring hosts were thrown on live television to learn the fine art of selling people things they don’t really need. This was not an actual training period – this was a crucible of misery and neglect deliberately designed to

Watch Mike sing a karaoke "My Way."

Watch the classic Kat Sak video.

weed out those candidates who should have never been hired in the first place. Tonight, Cranky Pete was gently acquainting me with a few of the many treasures in QVC©’s vast inventory by throwing them at me and seeing how long I could discuss their many virtues.

So far, I had explored the healing benefits of The Healthteam Infrared Pain Reliever and the revolutionary science found exclusively in The Amcor Negative Ion Generator. I had also presented a dancing Hummel, a karaoke machine, an Elvis Presley belt buckle, an eel skin wallet, and something called a Kat Sak. The litany was eternal – a never-ending parade of pabulum inspired by the kind of prizes you might win on the midway of some condemned carnival.

I caught the Glamour Puss Grooming Cat in mid-air and placed it before me on a velvet pad. I regarded it for a moment, looked up at the three robotic cameras staring back at me and addressed the one in the middle.

“Well folks, if you’re in the market for a low-maintenance pet, have I got a deal for you.” Off camera, Cranky Pete settled back in his chair and began to quietly snore.

“At last, a cat you don’t have feed. It’ll never run off, it’ll never pee on your carpet, and it’ll never get pregnant. It just sits there while you look at it. Plus, if my eyes don’t deceive me, it’s wearing make-up!”

As with much of the overnight inventory, the Glamour Puss Grooming Cat posed a two-pronged challenge. First of all, it was a product whose basic purpose eluded me. I had no appreciation of “collectibles” and no connection to anyone who did. Secondly, the clock on the screen informed me that I had been allotted six minutes to sell this particular feline or roughly five and a half minutes longer than I would have preferred. Here was a four-inch piece of porcelain painted in sissy colors and sporting girly human eyelashes. I mean, seriously, what can you say about such a thing?

“Look closely and I think you’ll agree that this is a pussycat with a real sense of style. A touch of sex appeal even? And really, how often do you see that in an animal?”

I proceeded to measure the cat. It seemed an obvious thing to do especially with several rulers in easy reach. After confirming its dimensions beyond any doubt, I repeated the price, unnecessarily. Then I measured it again, just because I could.

“Anyone remember Lee Merriweather as Catwoman? Or how about Eartha Kitt? Now that was a handsome feline. Pete? Am I right?”

In the remaining five minutes, things went steadily downhill. I took a phone call from a woman whose cat had just died and sought solace in the Glamour Puss Grooming Cat. I then segued into a grim tale of my own about an unfortunate kitten that ran in front of my car the day I got my drivers license, followed by some tertiary thoughts on hairballs, and a long diatribe about Garfield’s impact on modern psychiatry. I sprinkled in some inaccurate cat trivia and then wrapped things up by suggesting that the people over at Fenton Art Glass would be well served to butch up their inventory a bit. “Maybe a stained-glass shotgun,” I suggested, “or a nice porcelain cigar?” I then moved on to The QVC© Electronic Mosquito Repeller clearance priced at $14.99.

Over the next three years at QVC©, I maintained my “not-ready-for-prime-time” status, and got more accustomed to my late-night roost. I also saw a good deal more of Fenton’s handiwork…tiny ballet slippers, multi-colored vases, decorative bells and dozens of other whimsical creations that viewers continued to purchase in spite of my hapless presentations. (I never did see the stained-glass shotgun.) From time to time, George Fenton himself would visit QVC© to help sell his creations during a series of hour-long specials devoted entirely to his company’s wares. Of course, these occasions unfolded at a more civilized hour, with a more respectable Host. Consequently, when I finally left QVC© for good, I never gave George Fenton or his company or the Glamour Puss Grooming Cat a second thought. Seventeen years later, that would change.

———

When Barsky first broached the idea, I was baffled. “You got to be kidding,” I said. “Fenton Art Glass? They make glass turtles and porcelain pigs. What would we do there?”

“Well I was thinking you’d get dirty. That’s what you do, right?” Barsky’s need to state the obvious is eclipsed only by his love of rhetorical questions. It’s not a part of his job; it’s just the way he is.

“Look Dave, I’ve got plenty of memories of Fenton Art Glass, OK? I don’t need anymore. Besides, how dirty can it be?”

“You know how glass is made, right?” Again with the rhetorical questions.

“Yes Dave, I’m acquainted with the process. I saw it done in Williamsburg by a guy in costume who pretended he was in was the seventeenth century. But he was making a giant stained-glass window, not some pussycat. Does Fenton make windows?”

“Who cares? Glass is glass. They have a huge manufacturing facility in West Virginia and we haven’t shot there yet. Don’t you want Dirty Jobs to hit all 50 states?”

“I want Dirty Jobs to stay dirty,” I said. “Glass animals aren’t dirty. They’re fragile, and dainty and a little creepy.”

“That’s not true. I own a glass hippopotamus. And my wife has a glass donkey. They live together on our windowsill.” Barsky is a man of many surprises. He continued his pitch in a way that my former employer would have envied.

“Look Mike, they make everything under one roof. They’ve been around a hundred years. And, they’re an American company trying to make it through a lousy economy. It’s everything you want in a segment. It’s looks hot as hell and plenty dirty. Trust me.”

I looked at Dave the way I always do when I know it’s easier to agree than argue and a few weeks later, headed off to West Virginia plagued by memories of porcelain and worried that Dirty Jobs was about to become Dainty Jobs.

Well, it pains me to say it, but Barsky was right and I was wrong. Worse than wrong actually; I was ignorant and guilty of harboring a long-standing prejudice against fragile figurines. I am now redeemed.

In short, the men and women at Fenton kicked my butt. I spent 12 hours on the factory floor, lost several quarts of sweat and a modest amount of blood when something hot and fragile exploded in my palm. (Barsky’s fault entirely.) I learned to “gather.” I learned to pour. I learned that you could still burn your hands when wearing space-age gloves. I made paperweights and painted them myself. I made a vase for my mother. And of course, I made a mess.

True, I did see a lot of precious little trinkets that brought back a flood of troubling memories but watching them get made was a revelation. As was meeting the people who made them – people like Frank Workman.

Frank lives up to both his names and does things with magma you’ll need to see to believe. Many other employees at Fenton are in the steelworkers union, and look like it. They spend long days pulling thick wads of blistering lava out of giant kilns with mysterious tools that take decades to master. They do incredibly difficult things with amazing ease and dexterity. They laugh and sing and cuss a little, but care deeply about their work. The whole scene is a chaotic, but perfectly choreographed dance and I loved every minute of it.

At the end of the day, Barsky took me over to the ER to get my hand stitched up and on the way out, I ran into George Fenton. We had a few laughs about the Glamour Puss Grooming Cat, and reminisced about the kind of show we might have done had our paths crossed at QVC©. We further agreed that it was probably best that we didn’t meet in my former life.

I told him about mrW, and my attempt to build a large and useful trade resource center online. George was intrigued. As the owner of a family run manufacturing company that still makes stuff in the United States, how could he not be?

George has since offered to make a few items available here in the Warehouse, including those I made on the show, and I’m pleased to offer them to you now with a measure of respect I didn’t possess back in the day. Though self-explanatory, I’ve explained them anyway in captions under each photo.

And for those of you partial to the finer things, George has allowed me to offer, to the benefit of mrW, the Glamour Puss Grooming Cat. Do with it what you will. I suspect to see one on Barsky’s windowsill very shortly…