Cats have often been used as a means of pest control and one place where it used to be common to see a working cat is at the post office. According to ThePostalMuseum.org, cats were first officially employed in September of 1868 (although there were likely cats in post offices prior to that, they weren't on the payroll!) The Secretary of the Post Office agreed to a 6 month probationary period for 3 cats at the rate of 1 shilling per week to help with a mouse problem at the Money Order office in London. The cats must have done a good job, because cats continued to work in post offices until 1984! The job of mail cat was often...
We've talked about some cats with jobs on this blog before, like ship cats and therapy cats, but did you know that there was a cat who had a job as a mayor? The place was a small town in Alaska named Talkeetna where, in 1997, a box of kittens was placed in front of Nagley’s General Store and manager Lauri Stec selected an orange kitten with no tail and named him Stubbs. As the story goes, it was around that time that the residents of Talkeetna were unhappy with their mayoral candidates and started a write in campaign to select a different candidate and Stubbs the cat came out the victor! Now Alaska's News Source notes that Talkeetna is an unincorporated community and doesn't have an...
In this edition of cats of history, we'll look at the famous cat who accompanied the ill-fated Shackelton expedition: Mrs. Chippy! Mrs. Chippy was the cat of Harry McNish (sometimes spelled McNeish), who was a Scottish carpenter who had served as a shipwright in the Merchant Navy before joining the Shackleton expedition. Harry McNish brought Mrs. Chippy with him on the expedetion. "Chippy" is a nick name for a carpenter, so Mrs. Chippy got his name because of his devotion to Harry, the Chippy. By the time they realized Mrs. Chippy was a boy cat, the name had already stuck, so they continued to call him Mrs. Chippy. Historyhit.com details that Mrs. Chippy was at home as a ship's cat. He...
When you think of therapy animals, you probably think of dogs, but other animals are getting in on the action too! Pet Partners is an international organization dedicated to using therapy animals to improve people's health and well- being, and they register a variety of animals as therapy animals, including dogs, but also cats, horses, rabbits, guinea pigs, rats, birds, miniature pigs, llamas and alpacas! So, dogs are definitely not alone in their work as therapy animals! If you have a cat, you know how cats are therapeutic - you get home from a long day and a few snuggles and purrs later, you can feel the stress of the day start to dissipate! That's the idea behind cats therapy!...
Last week, we looked at toe beans and mentioned that in space there is cat's paw nebula. The week before that, we talked about barn cats and boat cats working in pest control, and that got me thinking... has there ever been a cat who worked as an astronaut? The answer is yes! Let's find out more about this space cat! Our intrepid astronaut cat started her days as a street cat in Paris. According to Allthatsinteresting.com cats were widely used in studies of neurophysiology in the 1960's, so French scientists thought training some cats for space missions would be a good way to study the effects of space flight, since cats were a well known animal. They rounded up 14...
