Cats and Badges

A friend of mine the other day sent me a picture of a retired badge and said she thought of me when she saw it:

I told her, “I earned that badge growing up!” and took a picture of it on my patch blanket:

(I still have my Senior sash with my tan back badges and IPAs on it, but my Brownie and green backed Junior badges are now on my patch blanket.)

My friend said she thought of me because I had recently posted a few pictures on Facebook of my patch blanket “helpers” who always show up when I try to work on it:

In case you’re wondering, that’s the Hobbies and Pets badge.  It was always one of my favorites growing up because it had a cat on it, but now that I have been a cat owner for many, many years, I now catch the humor in it.  I never picked up on the fact that the cat in the badge is lying on top of the scrapbook as they are prone to do when you’re reading or doing something that doesn’t involve them because everybody knows your undivided attention should be on the cat, not on what you’re trying to do!  Who says badge designers don’t have a sense of humor?

According to the Girl Scout Collector’s Guide, Hobbies and Pets was released in 1980 by combining a few previous badges.  In 1987, it was split back out into four separate badges:  Doing Hobbies, Collecting Hobbies, Making Hobbies, and Pet Care.  So I feel very lucky that I was able to earn this humorously designed badge in the few short years it was available!

Here are the requirements if you’d like to see them, complete with one of my leader’s initials and the date of when I finished that requirement and badge:  Hobbies and Pets requirements