Ken-L-Ration and Kit-E-Ration in 1928

Since I enjoy looking at the old photos that are on the Duke University site, when I saw a billboard for Ken-L-Ration I smiled, because I remember the commercials, which went "My dog's better 'cause he eats Ken-L-Ration, my dog's better than yours!", but I had no idea that there was a corresponding cat food.

Really, if I hadn't found this myself I wouldn't have believed that it wasn't Photoshopped. But there it is: Kit-E-Ration.

And for those of you who aren't quite old enough to remember the brand Ken-L-Ration, I'll explain it the best I can. "Ken-L" is a goofy way of saying "kennel", which a place for dogs, and "ration" is a term for food, usually used by the military.

Since this photo is from 1928, it looks like Ken-L-Ration had been successful enough that the manufacturers, which were the Chappel Brothers Inc. of Rockford, Illinois, decided to come up with a clever name for cat food. They reused the term "ration" of course, and made the word kitty goofy by spelling it Kit-E. Apparently it wasn't as successful as the dog food, as I have no recollection of any commercials advertising it was I was a kid. I suppose the commercials would have said, "My cat's better 'cause he eats Kit-E-Ration, my cat's better than yours!

Image from the Duke University Library Digital Collections.

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