.
TOM KITTEN: The pet of U.S. President John F. Kennedy’s daughter, Caroline. Unfortunately, Kennedy proved allergic to the cat, who was found a new home. At an auction of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’s estate, a framed picture of Tom sold for a breathtaking $13,000 .
MYOBU NO OMOTO: Favored pet of Japanese emperor Ichijo (980–1011). The pampered feline was so exalted that the emperor imprisoned the owner of a dog who dared to chase her .
MICETTO: A large tabby cat born in the Vatican who became the favored pet of Pope Leo XII. The pope allegedly held audiences while Micetto hid in his robes .
WHITE HEATHER: A fat Angora who was Queen Victoria’s favorite cat. The cat managed to outlive the famously long-lived queen and became the property of her son and successor, King Edward VII .
THE
HERMITAGE
GUARDS
THE CATS WHO WATCH OVER
RUSSIA’S GREATEST MUSEUM
Cats have always been great friends of libraries and museums. Because mice and rats will chew up an important old manuscript or a priceless painting just as readily as they would an ear of corn, numerous cultural centers have employed feline assassins to keep vermin damage to a minimum. But few such groups are as ancient, as numerous, or of such regal ancestry as the feline army defending the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
Today a force of roughly fifty cats watches over the sprawling complex, just as they have for more than two and a half centuries. Their work began back in the days when the Hermitage was still a palace for the czars. In 1745 Peter the Great’s daughter, Empress Elizaveta Petrovna, decided she’d had enough of the rodents in the building. She issued a royal proclamation decreeing the roundup of “better cats, the largest ones, able to catch mice.” They were to be dispatched to the court, accompanied by someone who could look after them.
The first contingent of felines arrived shortly thereafter. They must have done their work well, because they remained through the reign of every czar. They also survived the communist revolution intact, though the descendants of the original band were decimated during World War II. Saint Petersburg (then called Leningrad) was blockaded for months by German troops. Food became very scarce, and many of the Hermitage cats became entrées.
After the war, their numbers were replenished. While the cats the czars kept were said to be Persians, today’s collection is a somewhat motley assortment of former strays domiciled in the building’s basement. Donations by employees and proceeds from an annual sale of paintings made by the children of Hermitage workers are used to pay for the cats’ medical care, shelter, and food to supplement whatever they catch on their own.
Though the felines regularly patrol outdoors, they’re no longer allowed in the galleries and exhibit halls. On rare occasions, however, some do find their way in. But since they usually trigger the museum’s elaborate electronic security system in the process, they’re promptly escorted right back out.
SELIMA
THE CAT WHO DIED
FOR ART’S SAKE
Many cats enjoy posthumous honors, but few have been commemorated so artfully, or in such varied mediums, as Selima, the companion of eighteenth-century British author, politician, and aristocrat Horace Walpole, fourth Earl of Orford. Perhaps she received so much attention because she died so colorfully. While attempting to reach some goldfish in a porcelain vase, Selima fell in and drowned.
Walpole was bereft. He had an inscription about the cat carved on the offending vase (which can still be seen at his mansion, Strawberry Fields), and asked a poet friend, Thomas Gray, to author an epitaph. Gray went him one better, composing Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat . It advises the reader against striving blindly for unworthy goals, and it ends with the line that has made it immortal: “Not all that tempts your wand’ring eyes / And heedless hearts is lawful prize. / Nor
TOM KITTEN: The pet of U.S. President John F. Kennedy’s daughter, Caroline. Unfortunately, Kennedy proved allergic to the cat, who was found a new home. At an auction of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’s estate, a framed picture of Tom sold for a breathtaking $13,000 .
MYOBU NO OMOTO: Favored pet of Japanese emperor Ichijo (980–1011). The pampered feline was so exalted that the emperor imprisoned the owner of a dog who dared to chase her .
MICETTO: A large tabby cat born in the Vatican who became the favored pet of Pope Leo XII. The pope allegedly held audiences while Micetto hid in his robes .
WHITE HEATHER: A fat Angora who was Queen Victoria’s favorite cat. The cat managed to outlive the famously long-lived queen and became the property of her son and successor, King Edward VII .
THE
HERMITAGE
GUARDS
THE CATS WHO WATCH OVER
RUSSIA’S GREATEST MUSEUM
Cats have always been great friends of libraries and museums. Because mice and rats will chew up an important old manuscript or a priceless painting just as readily as they would an ear of corn, numerous cultural centers have employed feline assassins to keep vermin damage to a minimum. But few such groups are as ancient, as numerous, or of such regal ancestry as the feline army defending the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
Today a force of roughly fifty cats watches over the sprawling complex, just as they have for more than two and a half centuries. Their work began back in the days when the Hermitage was still a palace for the czars. In 1745 Peter the Great’s daughter, Empress Elizaveta Petrovna, decided she’d had enough of the rodents in the building. She issued a royal proclamation decreeing the roundup of “better cats, the largest ones, able to catch mice.” They were to be dispatched to the court, accompanied by someone who could look after them.
The first contingent of felines arrived shortly thereafter. They must have done their work well, because they remained through the reign of every czar. They also survived the communist revolution intact, though the descendants of the original band were decimated during World War II. Saint Petersburg (then called Leningrad) was blockaded for months by German troops. Food became very scarce, and many of the Hermitage cats became entrées.
After the war, their numbers were replenished. While the cats the czars kept were said to be Persians, today’s collection is a somewhat motley assortment of former strays domiciled in the building’s basement. Donations by employees and proceeds from an annual sale of paintings made by the children of Hermitage workers are used to pay for the cats’ medical care, shelter, and food to supplement whatever they catch on their own.
Though the felines regularly patrol outdoors, they’re no longer allowed in the galleries and exhibit halls. On rare occasions, however, some do find their way in. But since they usually trigger the museum’s elaborate electronic security system in the process, they’re promptly escorted right back out.
SELIMA
THE CAT WHO DIED
FOR ART’S SAKE
Many cats enjoy posthumous honors, but few have been commemorated so artfully, or in such varied mediums, as Selima, the companion of eighteenth-century British author, politician, and aristocrat Horace Walpole, fourth Earl of Orford. Perhaps she received so much attention because she died so colorfully. While attempting to reach some goldfish in a porcelain vase, Selima fell in and drowned.
Walpole was bereft. He had an inscription about the cat carved on the offending vase (which can still be seen at his mansion, Strawberry Fields), and asked a poet friend, Thomas Gray, to author an epitaph. Gray went him one better, composing Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat . It advises the reader against striving blindly for unworthy goals, and it ends with the line that has made it immortal: “Not all that tempts your wand’ring eyes / And heedless hearts is lawful prize. / Nor
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