Cats at War

A black-and-white cat, later named Adolf, travelled a total of over 90,000 miles (144,000 kilometres) with the US Fifth Air Force that fought in the Pacific theatre in the Second World War. He first climbed aboard a cargo plane in Darwin, Australia, in 1945, and developed the habit of hiding among the radio apparatus and appearing just as the engines started.

Wing Commander Guy Gibson, VC, the famous ‘dambuster’ of the Second World War, was often accompanied on his dangerous missions by his pet cat, Windy, ‘an all-swimming, all-flying cat’ who put in more flying hours than many pilots.

Known as the ‘Animals’ VC’, the Dickin Medal was instituted in 1943 and is awarded to animals for ‘conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty’ while serving with Britain’s armed forces or civil-defence units. Since then it has been awarded to three horses, thirty-two pigeons, twenty dogs (most recently during the Iraq conflict in December 2003) – and one cat. This was Simon, the mascot of the British frigate HMS Amethyst during the Yangtze Incident in 1949, and who, though badly wounded by the blast from a Chinese Communist shell, stayed at his post and continued to kill rats throughout the ship’s 101-day ordeal. Twenty-three of the Amethyst‘s crew, including her captain, died. Simon survived to return to Britain with the ship after her epic escape down river, but died of his wounds a month later. In 1993, Simon’s Dickin Medal was sold at auction for more than £23,000 (US $42,000).

During the First World War some 50,000 cats were officially employed by British forces to serve as ratters and mousers in the trenches. They also alerted troops to the advance of poisonous gas clouds, saving thousands of lives.

Cats deployed to hunt vermin in food stores during the Second World War were considered so important that they were awarded a powdered milk ration in honour of their service. The United States later launched a ‘Cats for Europe’ campaign and shipped thousands of American cats to France for similar purposes.

A Pennsylvanian family was reported to have sent a black cat to England, which was then flown to Europe, with the intention that it would cross Hitler’s path and bring him bad luck.

A female tabby named Faith and her kitten, Panda, made headlines in London newspapers during the Blitz when they were discovered under the debris of St Augustine’s Church after it suffered a direct hit from a bomb. The pair had been hiding in a storage cubby-hole in the rectory basement following heavy bombing in the preceding few days. Faith was awarded a silver medal and a certificate to celebrate her ‘steadfast courage in the battle of London’.

When US Sergeant Rick Bousfield learned his unit was leaving Iraq, he refused to leave a certain member of his team behind. He sought help from the Alley Cat Allies, a non-profit organization that raises awareness about the plight of feral cats, and attempts to place them in loving homes. To assist Rick, the organization raised money for vaccinations, official papers and a plane ticket to get home safely the tabby cat that had joined his team during their service. The cat became acquainted with the soldiers after it caught five mice in the mess hall; he was adopted, and named ‘Hammer’, after their unit. Soldiers frequently tucked Hammer into their body armour during artillery attacks, and he provided much-needed stress relief between combat. He now lives with Sergeant Bousfield in Denver, Colorado, USA.

Excerpt from Cats’ Miscellany by Lesley O’Mara (2005)

Cats in Art

'Cat-Tarot', by Water-cat

The history of the depiction of cats in art is almost as old as art itself. The domesticated cat has been a favourite subject of artists and writers since prehistoric times, while the wild animal, and especially big cats, have also fascinated many artists over the centuries. Representations of cats survive in fragments, and sometimes larger survivals, from ancient Greece, Crete, Babylon, Rome, Egypt and many other civilizations; indeed, some of the oldest artistic depictions are the ancient sculptures and drawings of the Egyptian cat goddess Bastet found in the Nile Valley.

The cat was also frequently portrayed in ancient Japan, where some of the drawings were so realistic that they were thought to have magical powers. People believed that if the drawings themselves were hung in homes and in temples they kept rats and mice away. Japanese Buddhists venerate cats after death, and the temple of Go-To-Ku-Ji in Tokyo is dedicated to them. IN each of the sculptures, relief carvings and paintings adorning the temple, the cat has a paw raised as if in greeting, a classical pose believed to bring good luck. Other Eastern civilizations, notably those of China and India, produced art that included cats, both in incidental subjects, and in straightforward depictions, while many Western artistic works from at least the Middle Ages, not just paintings and carvings but also tapestries such as La Dame au Licorne and illustrated religious works that emanated from monasteries before the coming of the printed press, include cats either figuratively or symbolically, and often as ‘accessories’ for the subjects of portraiture. A list of Western artists since the sixteenth century who have included depictions of cats in their works would be enormously long; it would include Leonardo, Rembrandt, Vandyke, Gainsborough, Van Gogh, Renoir, Morisot, Toulouse-Lautrec, Modigliani, Chagall, Klee, Rousseau and Picasso. There have been, too, artists who have made a name for themselves as painters of cats, among them Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen and Louis Wain.

Paul Klee (1879-1940)
The Swiss artist Paul Klee depicted a wide-eyed, watchful cat in his popular painting Cat and Bird. The simple image shows the bird on the cat’s forehead, literally on his mind, fulfilling the artist’s desire to ‘make secret visions visible’.

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)
The Florentine painter, sculptor, architect, musician, engineer, scientist and thinker, perhaps the greatest genius of the Italian Renaissance, said of cats, ‘the smallest feline is a masterpiece’. Only some thirteen paintings by Leonardo are known to survive, but he did make studies for a painting entitled The Madonna with the Cat, although whether he never completed it, or whether the finished work has been lost or destroyed, is not known. The initial studies, however, are in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence. Leonardo also produced a page of sketches of cats, detailing their movements and positions; amusingly, the page of drawings also includes a sketch of a dragon.

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
Like Paul Klee, the Spanish painter Pablo Picasso also produced a work entitled Cat and Bird. In the latter’s work, however, the depiction of the cat attacking the bird is allegorical of the cruelty of General Franco’s Fascist government in Spain.

Pierre Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)
The French Impressionist artist loved cats and depicted them in several paintings. Some of the best known are Portrait of Madame Manet, Julie Manet with a Cat and Sleeping Girl with a Cat.

Marc Chagall (1887-1985)
The Russian-born French painter Marc Chagall often depicted cats with very human faces and vice versa, as can be seen in his coloured etching of circa 1928-31, The Cat Transformed Into a Woman.

Rembrandt (1606-69)
The Dutch painter and etcher Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was the greatest northern European artist of his age. In his etching The Virgin and Child with Cat, Rembrandt uses the presence of the cat, within a domestic setting, to convey a feeling of intimacy in his depiction of the Nativity.

Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen (1859-1923)
The Swiss-born French art-nouveau painter and printmaker was famous for his advertising posters, in which he frequently depicted cats. He drew upon his home life for inspiration – his house in Paris was known as ‘Cats’ Corner’ – and would often incorporate his family and their cats in his works. His cats are sometimes elegantly realistic, and sometimes more stylized, but his work shows a deep understanding of the animals. Among his most famous advertisements featuring cats are Tournée du Chat Noir (1896; Le Chat Noir was a Parisian cabaret) and Lait Pur Stérilisé (1894).

Excerpt from Cats’ Miscellany by Lesley O’Mara (2005)

Celebrity Cats

Morris the Cat
Morris the Cat, a large orange-striped tabby, is one of the most famous cats in advertising, being the mascot of 9Lives cat food, an American product. With his cultured voice and pampered-pet attitude, he has been a favourite with the US public since he first hit TV screens in 1969, while his importance to his company is shown by the fact that his name is a registered trademark (as is 9Lives) and appears in advertising and promotions as ‘Morris® the Cat’.

Actually, the original Morris has been dead since 1975. He had been ‘discovered’ in 1968 at an animal shelter in Lombard, Illinois, where officials thought he had such star quality that they contacted a professional animal handler, Bob Martwick, who worked for the Leo Burnett Advertising Agency. Martwick thought so too, and rescued Lucky – as the cat was then called – from a dull and probably short life at the shelter, and began grooming him for the 9Lives cat-food account.

9Lives was especially taken with Morris, and in particular with the campaign that the agency had created, one of the most successful TV-advertising campaigns in history. To cap it all, the American public fell in love with the fastidious character personified by Morris, with the result that he became the best known and most recognizable cat in the USA. There have been several Morrises since the death of the original in 1975 (his immediate successor was Harry the Cat), and the current one lives in California with his handler and trainer.

Morris’s career was not confined to TV commercials alone, for he also appeared in the 1972 movie Shamus with Burt Reynolds and Dyan Cannon, while a life of him, Morris: An Intimate Biography by Mary Daniels, was published in 1974; later, in the 1980s, he appeared as the author of a number of books about cat care and health. As time passed he became a favourite with the media – Time Magazine called him ‘the feline Burt Reynolds’, although it is not known how the finicky Morris might have taken that – appearing in numerous magazines as well as on the cover of Cat Fancy‘s thirtieth-anniversary issue. In 1991 he even hosted a primetime television special, and he has been awarded a PATSY, the American Humane Society’s Picture Animal Top Star Award. He also allegedly campaigned for the Presidency of the United States in 1988 and again in 1992.

Orangey
By all accounts intolerant and demanding, Orangey achieved his greatest fame as ‘Cat’, the pet of Holly Golightly, the scatty call girl played by Audrey Hepburn in the film Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961). For all the charm of his screen performance, Orangey was apparently so bad-tempered and difficult to work with that even his owner, Frank Inn, disliked him. Nevertheless, because he had won two PATSYs (see Morris the Cat, above), he gained a reputation as one of the best animal actors in the world.

Syn
Syn, a Siamese, earned a PATSY (see Morris the Cat, above) for playing the title role of ‘DC’ in the 1965 Walt Disney film That Darn Cat!, which starred Hayley Mills and Dean Jones. A 1997 remake (without the exclamation mark in the title) starred Christina Ricci and Doug E. Doug, and was generally panned.

Excerpt from Cats’ Miscellany by Lesley O’Mara (2005)

Some Famous Cats

Atossa
The English poet Matthew Arnold (1822-88) immortalized his Persian cat, Atossa, in his 1882 poem ‘Poor Matthias’, about the death of his canary. In the poem, Arnold recalls how his old cat would sit motionless for hours beside the canary’s cage, never attempting to attack it, but never abandoning the hope that one day the bird would fall into her clutches.

Brownie
When its owner died in 1963, Brownie, of San Diego, California, became one of the richest cats in the world, inheriting US $415,000 (£217,000 at today’s rates) under the terms of the will.

Cato
According to at least two websites, this Californian Spangled cat was bought for the record sum of US $24,000 (£12,500 today; about £15,000 then) in January 1987, and eleven years later, in February 1998, became the new record holder as the world’s most expensive cat.

Selima
Selima was a cat owned by the English writer Horace Walpole. With his friend, the poet Thomas Gray (1716-71), famous for his long poem Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, Walpole made the Grand Tour of Europe in 1747, during which his beloved cat drowned in a goldfish bowl. To commemorate this sad event, Gray wrote a poem, ‘Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes’, which gave to the language the (slightly misquoted) expression, ‘All that glitters is not gold.’ Confusingly, the poet describes Selima as a tortoiseshell and a tabby.

Timothy
A white cat that was a favourite pet of the British detective-story writer Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957). He features in two of her poems, ‘For Timothy’ and ‘War Cat’.

Trim
This cat was born aboard the Royal Navy ship HMS Reliance in 1799 near the Cape of Good Hope and was adopted by Matthew Flinders (1774-1814), the ship’s assistant surgeon. Flinders would go on to become one of the leading explorers and surveyors of his age. Trim accompanied his master in his circumnavigation of Australia, and, when Flinders was detained, after a shipwreck, by the French in Mauritius, shared his captivity. The explorer described his much-loved cat as ‘one of the finest animals I ever saw … [his] robe was a clear jet black, with the exception of his four feet, which seemed to have been dipped in snow, and his under lip, which rivalled them in whiteness. He had also a white star on his breast.’ In 1995 a statue of Trim was erected in Sydney, paid for by public subscription.

Trixie
A black-and-white cat belonging to the English soldier Henry Wriothesley, third Earl of Southampton (1573-1624), during the reigns of Elizabeth I and James VI and I. When the Earl was imprisoned, under sentence of death, in the Tower of London for treason, Trixie, faithful to her master, decided to keep him company. It is said that during the two years of his incarceration she made her way across London and descended to his cell via the chimney, though Southampton’s wife may have helped her with her travels. The Earl was so impressed with the cat’s loyalty that before his release he commissioned a portrait of himself and his beloved pet together in his cell.

Excerpt from Cats’ Miscellany by Lesley O’Mara (2005)

Ten Reasons Why You Have to Own a Cat

Nothing better than a bit of felinity to raise one’s spirits (without necessarily dampening one’s antisocial and/or misanthropic mood).

• Cats are always interested in whatever you are interested in.
• Cats never criticize.
• Cats don’t mind what you watch on TV.
• Cats never need a babysitter.
• You never have to get up at 2 A.M. to feed a cat.
• Cats don’t talk back.
• It’s easy to make dinner for a cat.
• Cats don’t need to be walked.
• Cats don’t run up huge telephone bills.
• Cats don’t mind if you call them silly names.

Amphitrite

'Amphitrite', by Antoine Coysevox

An ancient pre-Hellenic Triple Goddess whose name means ‘all encircling Triad’, which is the sea that surrounds the earth. When Amphitrite walked about on her queendom, the waters grew calm and still. She is referred to by the Greek poet Pindar as ‘Amphitrite, goddess of the golden spindle’, and other references speak of her singing and dancing. Known as Salacia to the Romans, so entwined is her surviving mythology with her husband, Poseidon to the Greeks or Neptune to the Romans, that when depicted in art she never appears without him.

Amphitrite did not want to marry Poseidon, one of the upstart newcomer Patriarchal Greeks. She flatly refused him when he first proposed. After all, she was THE sea goddess and ruled her kingdom perfectly well without a man, thank you. However, the dolphin Delphinus, who found where she had fled from Poseidon’s unwanted attentions, managed to persuade her to marry the god. The dolphin’s reward was being placed in the sky as a constellation. Amphitrite’s was being demoted from great Triple Goddess to a mere nymph.

Excerpt from Mermaid Magic by Amy Sophia Marashinsky (HarperElement, 2005)

Benten

8-armed Benzaiten statue, allegedly by Kobo Daishi (Hase Dera Temple, Japan)

Benten swims through the Sea of Japan to visit her many shrines, either in the shape of a dragon, or with the top half a beautiful woman, lower half dragon or fish. This Japanese Sea Goddess is popular with those needing help in their romantic, intellectual or artistic endeavours. For those who petition her for assistance in the financial arena, she brings the blessings of abundance.

The only female among the seven gods of good luck, Benten is said to resemble the Hindu goddess of the arts, the pursuit of knowledge and good luck, Saraswati, and like her, she is often depicted with eight arms. Benten’s sacred animal is the snake and her favourite stones are jade and pearls.

Benten acquired her attribute of ‘protector of children’ when she wed the great dragon who was regularly eating the children of Koshigoe. The marriage changed the dragon’s dietary preferences and the grateful people honoured Benten. In a similar mythological vein, Benten stopped the earthquakes caused by unruly underground serpents when she mated with them in her dragon form.

Excerpt from Mermaid Magic by Amy Sophia Marashinsky (HarperElement, 2005)