Some of you may remember last Christmas when I was searching for the Betsy Wetsy doll that my mother had when she was a little girl. I was able to find one and Mom was thrilled when she opened Betsy on Christmas morning. At that time, I also started looking for a replacement for my old (missing) doll, Thumbelina, that my dad gave to me just before he died. I was five-years-old at the time.

I’ve been searching on and off for several months and had no luck at all until this week. You see, I’d been looking for a Madame Alexander doll named Thumbelina. One antique doll dealer even tried to help me at one point but didn’t know of any Madame Alexander dolls named Thumbelina. At Borders last week, I was thumbing through an antique doll catalog and saw some dolls that resembled Thumbelina…but they weren’t named Thumbelina. They were named “Blonde Pussy Cat.” Odd name for a little girl’s doll…but okay. I bought the book, came home and logged onto ebay and google to see what I could find. After about two hours, I almost cried when I clicked on a link and there, filling my laptop screen, was my Thumbelina!

I took note of her fingers, her toes, her lips, her hair, everything. The doll was exactly like her (though I’d cut my Thumbelina’s hair…and written between her lips with a ballpoint pen). Come to think of it, that new one looked a heck of a lot better than my old one! I quickly emailed the link to my mother just to confirm that it WAS actually her. Mom wrote back the next morning and confirmed it was my “Thumbelina.” Then then apologized because looking at the doll’s description jogged her memory. She now remembers that she and my father had changed the doll’s name when they gave it to me because they thought Blonde Pussy Cat sounded like a…well, not something a little girl should have in her toy box. (I can’t type what Mom said here because it would set off everyone’s sp*m filters.)

As soon as I read her email, I phoned the store that was selling the doll. I held my breath as the nice lady checked her inventory – 1960’s Vintage 25″ blue-eyed Madame Alexander Blonde Pussy Cat with working crier (still in the box!) – and came back to the phone to tell me, “I’m sorry, ma’am, but we sold her last week…”

Not to be defeated, I found another one on ebay, and this one had the same dress that my Thumbelina had! But, because I’d never used ebay before, I didn’t click fast enough at the end of the auction and my bid wasn’t received on time.

Oh well. Back to the dolly board! 🙂

Hugs to everybody!
Ang