by Merneith Ahhotep

I'm not going to pretend that the following five are the most famous, but just that they are famous, at least in certain quarters, and I felt like writing about them. Your milage may differ. After all, cats don't believe in heirarchy -- well , the top cat, but below that, everyone else is just a ... cat. The list below is not meant to be in any sort of rank, except perhaps alphalobetico.

Humphrey, Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office.
He was a rather long-lived cat (c. 1988 – March 2006), who resided at 10 Downing Street during the tenure of Margaret Thatcher and John Major, but who didn't survive the cleansing of Tony Blair. Often, the press considered him an actual employee. He was a stray named after Sir Humphrey Appleby, and succeeded the mouser Wilberforce in the mousing department. "At a cost of about £100 a year (paid for from the Cabinet Office's budget), most of which went toward food, Humphrey was said to be of considerably better value than the Cabinet's professional pest controller, who charged £4,000 a year and is reported to have never caught a mouse." By retirement, this venerable cat was officially Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office. However, like most political figures, he wasn't without his scandals. In 1994, he was accused of killing four robin chicks. Later that year he was also accused of "savaging" a duck. Anyhow, with the Tony Blair administration, Humphrey was moved out on November 13th 1997 amidst some sordid secrecy -- allegedly his wife was allergic -- to an undisclosed location. No doubt part of the feline witness protection program? The cat was reported alive in July 2005, but a death notice was printed "sometime" March 2006.

There's currently supposed to be a successor cat, now. In September 2007, Sybil moved from Edinburgh to 10 Downing Street with the Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling and his family. She lives with them in the apartment/flat above the 10 Downing location. This new feline resident is named after Sybil Fawlty from Fawlty Towers.

Jeoffry (Christopher Smart's cat).
Jeoffry was immortalized in the poem, "For I will consider my cat Jeoffrey", a segment of a much longer work entitled "Jubilate Agno". Published posthumously in 1939, the segment concerning Jeoffrey (Geoffrey) has been widely disseminated among cat lovers. Christopher (Kit) Smart (1722 - 1771) spent much of his life confined to madhouses (1756-63), although it seems he was also part genius and part religious eccentric. In an era of devout worship, Kit Smart took this further: nearly incessant public praying in the streets, in which he accousted others to join him. (From the way the poem reads, his must have been a joyous form of prayer.) Not only is "Jubilate Agno" a poem about a cat, it is mostly marked by its religious dimensions. Kit Smart sees his cat as a worshiper of the "Living God" in his own happily feline fashion, with his own manners of giving worship and due to the divine:

For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.
For this is done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness.
For then he leaps up to catch the musk, which is the blessing of God upon his prayer.
For he rolls upon prank to work it in.
For having done duty and received blessing he begins to consider himself.
For this he performs in ten degrees.

Christopher Smart

Jeoffry proceeds through ten steps of cleansing or preparing himself. He is also a cat considerate to other cats he meets, and plays with the mice he catches, so as to give them the opportunity to escape. Smart associates the cat with the sun, and notes that at night Jeoffry's real work begins: keeping the Devil at bay. Jeoffry is benevolent if well-treated, and one can be certain Smart treated him well. His strengths lie in cleanliness, dexterity, perseverence, still-ness and motion. Smart acknowledges the Egyptian connection all cats share. It appears that at one point Jeoffry was bitten by a rat, but survived.

The poem was written while Smart was confined, and there is no indication he ever planned to publish it. Indeed, experts believe the poem to be incomplete. Verses beginning with "For..." were apparently intended to be balanced by verses beginning with "Let..."

As for Christopher Smart: He was born to an old family in Kent, and attended Cambridge where he apparently majored in tavern-going in between writing. He did gain a fellowship which he retained until 1753 upon marrying the daughter of John Newberry, the publisher. Throughout his life he had difficulties with creditors. The madhouse he was in while writing "Jubilate Agno" was a privately run establishment. It was probably important for such places to keep cats for rodent control.

Mu'izza (Muhammad's cat).
Mu'izza (or Muezza) was said to be Muhammed's favorite cat. Whether true or not, the tale is told about Muhammed going to get his robe to wear for prayer, finding his cat asleep on the sleeve. Rather than wake Mu'izza, he sliced off the portion of the sleeve the cat slept upon, and dressed for prayer. He may have also ritually washed using water that his cat had drank from, in the cleansing practice known as wudu (partial ablution). "There is not an animal (that lives) on the earth, nor a being that flies on its wings, but (forms part of) communities like you. Nothing have we omitted from the Book, and they (all) shall be gathered to their Lord in the end." Qur'an 6:38.

Scarlett the cat.
I remember hearing about this cat (though not her eventual name) when the event happened, back in 1996. There was a fire in a destitute, run down section of Brooklyn, New York. Firefighters responded. When they got there, alongside the fire in a garage, they found a stray mother cat desperately trying to rescue her kittens. At the time of rescue, she'd gotten five kittens out (it is apparently not known if there were any more). She carried them out one by one, returning to rescue the next. The firefighter who found her named her Scarlett. When she was found, firefighters helped her and her family in turn. According to Wikipedia, she was severely burned herself in her rescue effort: "Her eyes were blistered shut, her ears radically burned, her paws burned and her coat seriously singed. The hair on her face was almost completely burned away. After saving the kittens, she was seen to touch each of her kittens with her nose to ensure they were all there and alive, as the blisters on her eyes kept her from being able to see them, and then [she] collapsed unconscious."

Four of her five kittens survived, as did the mother, due to immediate care on the part of the human rescue team. All were placed in caring foster homes.

I've heard more recently a couple other stories of hero cats: One jumped on his human's body and awoke him by scratching at him, to alert him of a house fire (Cat Fancy). Another was at a New York City apartment when a man broke in -- when the man held the occupants at gunpoint the household cat lept at him, scratching and distracting him enough that he could be disarmed. (WCBS news radio 88, New York). In yet another story, a cat apparently used speed dial to reach 911 (emergency phone number in the USA) to alert first responders to a medical emergency where his human -- who had a medical background history to begin with, and had allegedly trained his cat to help -- had passed out. (When no one spoke to the people at 911, someone was sent out to investigate.) I don't recall the source on this one, but likely WCBS as above.

Unsinkable Sam (Oscar).
This is a WWII cat that had found itself a home on a German vessel, the Bismarck, in the early days of that war. Nothing is known about his original name or history, or who first brought him aboard. On May 27th, 1941, the Bismarck was sunk, on its maiden voyage from port after a heavy battle. The cat was found hanging onto floating debris by the British attackers, and adopted under the name, Oscar. He was adopted as the mascot of the British warship, Cossack. This lasted as long as the Cossack lasted. The ship was attacked by Germans on October 24th, and sank on October 27th, 1941. Oscar was one of those rescued.

Having survived the downing of two ships, the feckless cat was now given the name of "Unsinkable Sam", and he now made his home on the Ark Royal, also a British ship -- and one that had played a role in downing the original Bismarck. Unfortunately, this ship was in turn torpedoed in mid-November. The vessel went down slowly, and so all but one of the people aboard were rescued; and of course, Unsinkable Sam. He was found "angry but quite unharmed", as the reports say. At this point the cat was retired from military service. He stayed for a while in Gibraltar (nearby where the latest incident occurred), but then found a home in retirement at a seaman's abode in Belfast. Presumably, he appreciated this.