Having contracted tuberculosis and, seeking the relief of a warm climate, Cato left England in 1914 to photograph on the expeditions in Rhodesia of Professor Cory of Grahamstown University.

[citation needed] In 1920, Cato, still convalescing, returned to Tasmania, where he operated his own portrait-studio in Hobart, and there married Mary Boote Pearce (d.1970) on 24 December 1921.

He put his pictorialist style, natural gregariousness,[10] love of theatre[11] and technical knowledge[12] to effect in becoming a leader of the trade in Melbourne for two decades.

[13] His society, theatre and advertising photographs were frequently published in magazines and newspapers including The Australian Women's Weekly, The Argus, Table Talk,[14] The Illustrated Tasmanian Mail,[15] The Hobart Mercury, and The Australasian.

State and theatrical photography under the friendly patronage of Dame Nellie Melba, Covent Garden Opera, Caruso, Pavlova, Bernard Shaw, Marie Corelli, Churchill, etc., etc., etc.

—return to Australia – twenty-five years portraiture, pictorial, commercial, architectural, medical – ballet, theatre, royalty, beggars, bishops, prime ministers, weddings, banquets, criminals, generals, corpses, millionaires, nudes, lunatics, models, artists.

"Vanitas Vanitatum” Then I secured a lot more paper and began to fill in names and incidents...Cato’s next book was a pictorial documentary, Melbourne (1949).

His book, The Story of the Camera in Australia, discloses something of the work and character of such men as Fauchery, Kerry, Lindt, Caire, Merlin, Wagner and others.

[27]A keen stamp-collector from childhood (also 1935 president of the Royal Philatelic Society of Victoria), Cato was able to sell his stamps for about £10,000 in 1954 to finance six years of research for this book.