Sam Stall - 100 Cats Who Changed Civilization

Copyright 2007 by Quirk Productions, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Number: 2006937818

eISBN: 978-1-59474-588-1

Designed by Bryn Ashburn
Illustrations by Gina Triplett

e-book production management by Melissa

Quirk Books
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Philadelphia, PA 19106
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v3.1

To Ted.
He might not have been
the greatest cat in the world,
but he was the greatest
in mine.

Cats are a mysterious kind of folk. There is more passing in their minds than we are aware of.
Sir Walter Scott

Cats have communed with mankind since before the dawn of civilization. Yet discovering the handful who helped shape our history was no easy task. The typical feline is blithely uninterested in the comings and goings of the human race. Its partperhaps the most important partof their character. The people around them can do as they like, so long as there is food in the food dish, clean litter in the litter box, and a sunny window ledge from which to watch the world go by.

Nevertheless, over the centuries certain individuals of the feline persuasion have seen fit to exert themselves on humanitys behalf. For the most part they do it in their own distinctive way, for their own inscrutable reasons. Blatant grandstanding, such as, say, rescuing a toddler from a burning tenement, just isnt their style. Those escapades are best left to dogs.

Instead of showing off, many of the cats profiled in the following pages earned their laurels in more subtle ways. These luminaries could be divided into four broad groups: muses, pioneers, antiheroes, and heroes.

The muses made their marks by willingly giving companionship, inspiration, or even a simple morale boost to needy geniuses. who inspired scientist Nicola Tesla to begin his world-changing study of electricity.

Some of the pioneers earned spots in the history books without even knowing it. A Canadian cat named hasnt the slightest inkling that he was awarded an executive MBA.

Of course, not all cats who changed history did so for the better. Thankfully, this small rogues gallery of antiheroes is likewise ignorant of its misdeeds. A lighthouse keepers pet named was spared all knowledge of the serious diplomatic row he triggered between Pakistan and the United States.

Finally, this book would be remiss were it not to enumerate the sagas of classic hero catsfelines who during a crisis displayed such human-centric characteristics , who used a phone to call the police when his wheelchair-bound owner was incapacitated.

All these felines, plus the dozens of others enshrined in these pages, changed history in smalland sometimes not-so-smallways. Their indifference, indeed their obliviousness to their achievements, could serve as an example for vain humans, many of whom make a much bigger fuss over much more modest accomplishments.

Felines are famous for their skill at eradicating mice, rats, and birds. But no cat in the history of civilization can match the unbridled bloodlust displayed by a humble lighthouse keepers pet named Tibbles. Hes become famousor rather, infamousin the annals of science as the only animal to have wiped out an entire species by itself.

The unlucky species in question was the Stephens Island wren. By all accounts, it was as unusual as it was harmless. Because there were originally no mice in the corner of the world where it evolved, the wren adapted to fill that ecological niche. It lost the ability to fly, shrank to roughly the size of a rodent, and spent its days running at top speed through the underbrush. But though it couldnt fly, the wren retained the ability to sing.

At one time this fragile, musical, mouselike bird called all of New Zealand home. But when South Pacific islanders arrived, they brought stowaway rats on their shipsrats that quickly invaded the local ecosystem. The wrens, completely helpless against the sudden onslaught of such a powerful and ruthless predator, were quickly exterminated. Their last rat-free redoubt was Stephens Island, a roughly one-square-mile spit of rock off New Zealands northern coast.

Thats how matters stood until 1894, when a lighthouse was established there. Its keeper, David Lyall, brought along his cat, Tibbles, for company. One can only imagine the felines delight at finding the island overrun with bite-sized, flightless birds. Not surprisingly, Tibbles got straight to work, attacking the little creatures wherever he found them.

Tibbles alerted his owner to his new hobby by hauling more than a dozen of his victims back to the lighthouse, all of them dead or nearly so. Lyall kept several, which because of their strangeness found their way into the hands of ornithologists. In 1895 the little animal was unveiled to the scientific world and given the Latin name Xenicus lyalli. Then, almost in the same breath, it was declared extinct.

The ecological destruction inaugurated by a pack of rats was, ironically, completed by a lone cat. It never occurred to the lighthouse keeper, or anyone else, that given the unique (and uniquely fragile) nature of the Stephens Island fauna, it might have been a good idea to make Tibbles an indoor cat.

Douglas Beamish thought he got away with murder. And he might have, if it werent for the case-making evidence furnished by his cat.

It happened in 1994, when Canadian authorities on Prince Edward Island found Shirley Duguay buried in a shallow grave. Royal Canadian Mounted Police were called in to investigate. They paid particular attention to a blood-soaked leather jacket in a plastic bag that had been buried along with the body. Unfortunately, the blood was all Duguays, and therefore useless for DNA comparisons. But forensics experts discovered something else: twenty-seven strands of white hair that, upon closer examination, were determined to come from a cat. The Mounties recalled that Beamish, Duguays estranged common-law husband, lived not too far from the grave site with his parentsand that they owned a white feline named Snowball.