Honored (Part Two)

The Tooley cats were incensed when I published my blog about monuments to dogs last week. My plea that I didn’t know of any memorials to virtuous cats was met with feline disdain. To mollify them, I embarked on serious Google searching which proved fruitful. The cats are now saying, “We told you so.”

If you are a cat owner (or more correctly a person who a cat has decided to tolerate)  you may wish to share the following with your felines.

Trim – A black cat with white paws, chest and chin, Trim was a sailor through and through. He was the constant companion of Englishman Matthew Flinders on his many voyages, most notably his circumnavigation and mapping of Australia.

Trim was born aboard a ship and fell overboard as a kitten. Managing to swim back and climb back aboard by scaling a rope, Trim became a favorite of Flinders and his crew. The two of them went on to have years of adventures including a shipwreck and imprisonment.

These words by Matthew Flinders are on a plaque beside a statue of Trim in Sydney:

To the Memory of Trim
The best and most illustrious of his race
The most affectionate of friends,
faithful of servants,
and best of creatures
He made a tour of the globe, and a voyage to Australia which he circumnavigated,
and was ever the delight and pleasure of his fellow voyagers.

Trim has five memorials; Sydney, Adelaide and Port Lincoln, Australia, and Lincolnshire and London, England.

 

Hodge – Dr. Samuel Johnson was a towering literary figure in the 1700s who is most famous for writing the dictionary. A lover of cats, Johnson would personally go to the markets to get oysters for one of his favorite cats, Hodge. A memorial to Hodge stands in front of Johnson’s home in London. Note the oyster shells in front of Hodge who is serenely sitting on a dictionary.

 

photo: waymarking.com

Dick Whittington’s Cat – Richard Whittington (1354-1423) was from very humble origins, but became a Lord Mayor of London as well as a wealthy textile merchant. The famous stories and nursery rhyme about Dick Whittington and his famous cat are, however, pure legend. In the fables, Dick is a penniless orphan who reluctantly sells his cat to a ship’s captain. The cat excels at catching rats and is subsequently given by the captain to a king in Africa whose palace is overrun by vermin. In gratitude, the king bestows a fortune to the sea captain who graciously turns it over to Dick Whittington enabling him to live like a gentleman.

 

Towser – Cats have long been called upon to rid farms, homes and businesses of mice and rats. But one cat stands above all the others and is honored as “the most productive cat of all time” in the Guinness  Book of Records. Towser the Mouser caught an estimated 28,899 mice in her 24 years (1963-1987) living in the Glenturret Distillery in Scotland. She was a gorgeous Scottish long hair tortoiseshell. Her fame is recognized in a bronze statue at the distillery.

You might have noticed that these honored cats were all engaged in activities that they personally enjoyed doing.

 

 

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1 thought on “Honored (Part Two)”

  1. Regarding your final sentence: What cat would EVER be engaged in any activity they didn’t personally enjoy! You seem to enjoy writing these essays…You have obviously learned much from your housemates…

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