In the early days of SPECTRE, Ernie the Cat kept things relatively simple and elegant. No doubt still perfecting his mind-control techniques, he chose to hold court in a relatively unassuming private yacht off Venice, limiting direct contact with his underlings to two or three at a time. He chose a mysteriously sinister, smooth-and-deep-voiced host to be the first Blofeld, and further guarded his identity by answering only to "Number One." Ernie also devoted much of his attention to his own comforts and amusements — commanding his host to stroke and massage his fur, and arranging Siamese fighting fish tournaments in which he would feast on the losers.
After the fiasco that was the Kronsteen LEKTOR caper, Ernie began to assume much tighter control of his organization, moving his headquarters to Paris and marshaling his minions from behind an identity-concealing screen (which ironically allowed the other SPECTRE agents a view of only the cat).
Ernie's schemes grew bolder and much less subtle during this period, and having taken the lessons of previous failures to heart, he introduced more formality to his organization through stricter (and more mechanized) controls. Ernie also eschewed the creature comforts, opting for a colder, more austere office setting, and was not seen to nibble idly on fish during business hours again.
Unfortunately, Emilio Largo proved to be as hapless an underling as Kronsteen and Klebb had been, and in the wake of the large-scale failure of his nuclear extortion scheme, Ernie dispensed with his original "Blofeld" host and set about reorganizing and rebranding SPECTRE along much more ambitious and megalomaniacal lines. | 
"Siamese fighting fish. Delicious, but on the whole, stupid."
 "Number 9 is clearly guilty of embezzlement. Fry him." |
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