Catty and batty was the Lawside game

OUR Dundonian about Lawside Academy through the years brought a flurry of letters, including replies to a query about what a woman was demonstrating in a 1989 image. Here are some of your replies.

IT looks to me that the game is catty and batty in which the cat is placed on the edge of the kerb and hit by the bat causing it to spin forward, you would also hit the cat forward with the bat as it spun into the air.

The distance achieved was then counted by using the bat as a measure.

The cat was about four inches long and square, made of wood with the numbers one to four carved on each side and used for scoring, although I can’t remember how we scored the game.

On our street — Langshaw Road in Dryburgh — we played in the square. The cat and the bat was homemade and we had a couple of them shared between the kids on the street. This would be in the early fifties.

Fergus Pryce, Ajax, Ontario.

IT’S a game called, if I remember correctly, “catty and batty”. The object was to hit the catty on an end to make it jump in the air and hit it before it hit the ground, whatever landed face up was what you scored. I was at Lawside and left in 1967, but never saw that played.

Jim McWilliams, New York.

I WAS a teacher in the English department at the time and the background to the photo is this.

As part of their Standard Grade English course S3 pupils studied a unit on old Dundee.

Older people, including pupils’ grans and grandads, were invited in to meet with the pupils in order to generate writing pieces. The picture is of a lady demonstrating one of the games people used to play pre modern technology.

John Quinn.

THE lady in the photo is about to hit downwards on “the catty” with “the batty”, this being a well-played street game during and after the war.

Jack Cook.

SHE is trying out catty and batty, an old fashioned game from the 50s.

Margaret Mason.

LOOKS like a game of catty in the batty. You hit the stick with the bat and see how far it flies.

Peter Cassidy.

CATTY and Batty of course. A street game of 1950s and earlier.

Nancy Gilmartin. Andi Lothian.

THE fashion show photo from 1991 features my son Chris Jones behind the female model (unknown).

Marie Jones.

I WAS delighted by the first class pictures of Lawside Academy. All the pictures, however, relate to the “new” school at Macalpine Road.

A previous Lawside Academy, located at the southern foot of the Law, was established in 1907, relocating to Macalpine Road in 1966.

The school survived in both locations for more than one hundred years.