Twenty-eight years after New Yorker magazine cartoonist, Charles Addams, died, we still delight in his unique way of looking at the world.  Twisted without being insane, wicked without being mean, and humorously macabre without the malice of Edward Gorey, Addams drew characters that were delightfully ghoulish, some of which inspired the TV series, “The Addams Family” (Uncle Fester, Addams once revealed, was the character with whom he most related).  In 55 years of cartooning, Addams drew over 1,300 cartoons, but only 150 were devoted to The Addams Family characters.

In 1985, Tee and Charles, and all their pets, moved to Sagaponack, New York

Called “Chill” by his friends, Addams’ personal life seemed at times not too different from his subject matter, and it was often subject to rumor: He slept in a coffin, responded to fan mail on paper with the letterhead of a mental institution, and loved to wear a monogrammed straitjacket.  Undisputed is that he used a Civil War-era embalming table as his coffee table; a favored perch for his cocktails was the tombstone of a young girl  (“Little Sarah, Aged Three”), he married his third wife, “Tee,” in a dog cemetery where the bride and attendants wore black, and that his cremated remains following his death were interred in the family’s pet cemetery at the Charles Addams Estate Grounds in Sagaponeck, New York.  Also uncontested was that both loved animals. Tee was a major supporter of an adoption center for dogs and cats on the East End of Long Island, New York, and together, they owned many dogs, including “Tigger,” a feisty Papillon, and “Macy, a Yorkshire Terrier” that Addams once said was ”more than a little goony.” Never once, however, did we find reference to any of the Addams’ pets being creepy and kooky.