Three Upbeat Historical Cats

From caterer cat to war cat to museum guard, these three cats have their own unique places in history. Rest assured, while all creatures pass on, none of the cats in this episode meet a bad end.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, A production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy P. Wilson. Okay, Tracy,
that episode on swill Milk was horrifying. Yeah, and you

(00:23):
know it. Listeners won't know unless we tell them. We
recorded that in the same session as we're about to
record this. They're spread out in the calendar. They're right
together in the studio. Yeah. So I had had mostly
finished researching that one, and it was so depressing I
actually didn't turn it in the normal time I would,

(00:44):
and I messaged you like, I cannot look at anymore
illustrations of abused cows tonight, Like I can. I can't
do it um. And so after that I needed a
palate cleanser. I could not bear the thought of another downer,
and I loved the idea of doing something fun with
animals to counter it. So in thinking of something both

(01:05):
comforting and fun, I thought about kiddies. Of course, uh
specifically historically interesting cats, and there are actually a lot
of them, but I really wanted to keep it fairly
upbeat in the ones I selected, So that is a
promise I can make you. You can rest assured that
all creatures, of course pass on, but none of the
cats in these stories meet in a bad end. Uh.

(01:28):
And if this one is fun, we can always do
more like this down the road. Right, Historical animal groupings
could be a whole new genre for us. I think
we've got way way way back in the archives, so
long ago that I'm pretty sure it's Candice's farewell episode
Historical Poaches. I think that's Sarah's first episode. There are
actually two historical war Dogs, um, and I think the

(01:51):
first one is Sarah's first episode where they do the
audios to Candice. Um. But yeah, So, but to set
the up and do kind of an introduction because I
wanted to include this, but um, it's not exactly meaty
in terms of what we know. We're going to briefly
touch on a cat we don't really know much about.

(02:12):
But I thought it made a nice place to start.
So the first cat we're going to talk about, as
Holly said, is honestly pretty thin on information. This kind
of an introductory remark. It's pretty short. The name of
the cat is also the name of a poem, Pangerbun.
This poem was originally written in the ninth century by

(02:33):
an Irish monk, and the name translates to white Fuller.
The poem was found in a manuscript and a monastery
in Austria, and that is the only place that has
appeared this one copy of this poem. Yeah, I also
have seen that place being attributed to Germany. I didn't
go super deep. It could be a matter of shifting lines.

(02:54):
But the important thing here is that this is a
very popular piece of literature and it has been translated
many times, including a very very well known version by
Robin Flower. There's a version by W. H. Auden, and
then in two thousand and six it was translated by
Shamus Heaney and he actually wrote of the work quote
Pangerbond is a poem that Irish writers like to try

(03:17):
their hand at, not in order to outdo the previous versions,
but simply to get a more exact and intimate grip
on the canonical goods. The poem explores the writer's efforts
at putting words to paper and compares it to his
cat's endeavors at mouse catching. Ultimately, it becomes about simply
working through the effort to find the moments of success

(03:41):
and The likening of this monk's intellectual pursuit to the
cat's instinctual efforts offers a literary example of cats not
only as companions but also as philosophical mirrors to humans.
So it seems like a good prelude to an episode
about historical cats, as we can sider why we notate

(04:02):
cats of important history. This is what seemed like a
great place to start. And this poem is not especially long,
but I'm not gonna read the whole thing. Instead, I'll
just jump to the last three stanzas this is of
the heeny translation, so if you look it up just
in general, you might find something different. But these are
his with his unsheathed perfect nails, panger springs exults and

(04:23):
kills when the longed for difficult answers come, I too exult,
So it goes to each his own no vying, no vexation, taking,
pleasure taking pains, kindred spirits, veterans, day and night, soft,
per soft pad panger Bond has learned his trade day
and night. My own hard work solve the cruxes makes

(04:47):
a mark. So we don't know anything about panger Ban
other than I'll love of hunting mice. We do know
a bit more about the three other cats that were covering,
all of whom have made very different marks on history. Yes,
So to cover this first one, we actually have to
touch on just a little bit of history about England's
transition from being ruled by the House of York under

(05:08):
Richard the Third to being ruled by the Tutors, and
specifically the life of a courtier who comes up periodically
named Henry Wyatt. There's a portrait of Wyatt that was
painted sometime in the eighteenth century by an unknown artist,
and it features Wyatt on the left side of the
composition and a cat on the right. The cat is

(05:29):
a gray or silver tabby and it has its paw
upon a pigeon. The cat is gazing directly at Wyatt,
but Wyatt is not looking at the cat. His gaze
is fixed on something to the right of the frame,
and the scene is set in a prison. The cat
is actually pulling the pigeon through the bars on the window,

(05:51):
and that cat, which is featured in other portraits of
Wyatt as well, becomes in some ways central to the
Wyatt family history. Henry why it was the son of
Richard Wyatt, a squire and Richard's wife, Margaret, who was
an heir of William Bailiff, and Henry was born in
fourteen sixty. We don't know a lot about his early years,
but as a young man he aligned himself with the Tutors.

(06:13):
It appears before they took this ron. He is believed
by some to have participated in a revolt against King
Richard the Third in fourteen eighty three, and that revolt,
known as Buckingham's Revolt and named for Henry Stafford, second
Duke of Buckingham, was backed by the exiled Tutors, but
it was unsuccessful. Though it failed, the massive revolt, which

(06:33):
included a small fleet of ships from Brittany, did destabilize
Richard the Third's power. As for his involvement in the
attempted overthrow of the king, Henry Wyatt is said to
have been imprisoned by Richard the Third. The location for
this is usually given as the Tower of London, but
it's not entirely certain Richard the third. Historian Annette Carson

(06:56):
notes that, based on a letter written in April fifteen
eight by Henry Wyatt's son Thomas the Elder, he was
more likely imprisoned in Scotland. We're going to come back
to the specifics of this imprisonment. But after Richard the
Third was killed at the Battle of Bosworth and King
Henry the seventh took the throne, Henry Wyatt was freed

(07:17):
from whichever prison it was that he was in, and
from there his fortune grew. He became keeper of Norwich
Castle in fourteen eighty five, then he was made Clerk
of the King's Jewels in fourteen eighty six. He then
was promoted to Master of the King's Jewels and Clerk
of the King's Mint, before gaining the title Keeper of
the Change, a Sayer of the Money in Coinage, and

(07:38):
Comptroller of the Mint. He acquired Allington Castle in four
and in fifteen o four he was made Privy Counselor
to the King and was granted arms by Henry the
seventh and the years that followed, and when Henry the
Eighth ascended to the throne, Wyatt served him as well
and became Treasurer of the King's Chamber. Wyatt is often

(07:58):
described as a man who was below by many, and
he lived with sounds other than that imprisonment problem, like
a pretty good life for a quarter of the time
up until his death in November seven. But all of
this was possible because he survived that period of imprisonments,
which is often described as brutal, and the hero of

(08:18):
that story is a cat. So we don't have any
contemporary accounts of Sir Henry Wyatt's time in prison. He
doesn't show up on any prison records, and thus there
are no notes regarding the nature of his treatment or
the conditions he may have faced there. It's also why
we're not sure exactly which prison it was. Well, we
do have our accounts that were recorded by his descendants,

(08:40):
so we have two caveat that these are all family
stories and they don't have primary sources to back them up.
You probably have family stories, and you know that some
of them have shifted and embellished over time and maybe
aren't entirely true. However, this is a very good story. Uh.
In seventeen thirty one, Richard Wyatt, who was Henry's great
great great great grandson, created a document titled Passages taken

(09:05):
out of a manuscript wrote by Thomas Scott of Eggerston
in Godmersham, Esquire, concerning the family of Wyatt of Allington.
The Thomas Scott reference. There was the great great grandson
of Henry Wyatt, and he was recording what was told
to him by another family member, most likely his grandmother.
So you can see how easily this entire thing may

(09:26):
have been embellished, or ballooned, or just moved around a
little bit in various ways. The basics of the family story, though,
were that during his imprisonment, Henry was tortured, possibly by
Richard the Third himself. This torture went on in a
variety of ways, and more importantly to this story, he
was also starved until a cat saved him. The passage

(09:51):
from Richard Wyatt's a document that mentions this cat reads
as follows quote. He was imprisoned, often once in a
cold and narrow tower, where he had neither bed to
lie on, nor clothes sufficient to warm him, nor meat
for his mouth. He had starved. There had not God,
who sent a crow to feed his profits sent this
in his country's martyr, a cat both to feed and

(10:14):
warm him. It was his own relation, unto them, from
whom I had it. A cat came one day down
into the dungeon unto him, and as it were, offered
herself unto him he was glad of her, laid her
in his bosom to warm him, and by making much
of her one her love. After this she would come

(10:36):
every day into him diverse times, and when she could
get one, bring him a pigeon. He complained to his
keeper of his cold and short fare. The answer was
he durst not better it, But said Sir Henry, if
I can provide any will you promise to dress it
for me? I'm a well enough, said he, You are

(10:58):
safe for that matter, and being urged again, promised him,
and kept his promise, dressed for him. From time to
time such pigeons as his acutor the cat provided for him.
Sir Henry Wyatt, and his prosperity for this would ever
make much of cats as other men of their spaniels
or hounds. And perhaps you shall not find his picture anywhere,

(11:21):
but like Sir Christopher Hatton with his dog with a
cat beside him. Okay, So, in case that somewhat stilted
language makes it tricky to discern, Henry Wyatt made a
deal with his jailer that the jailer would dress and
cook any meat that Wyatt came up with. Something that
Whyatt did when he realized the cat was bringing him
provisions in the form of pigeons, and the jailer agreed,

(11:43):
kind of thinking such a request might be nonsense, but
apparently stuck to the agreement when Wyatt produced these pigeons,
and so he ate pretty regularly thanks to this nameless cat. Incidentally,
the word acuatur which appears in the text as an
old spelling of the word a cater, which is an
obsolete version of the word caterer. So, Sir Henry Wyatt's salvation,

(12:06):
at least according to his family legend, was a caterer cat.
We do not know what happened to the caterer cat
who was said to have saved Wyatt. Presumably she stayed
behind when he was freed. Yes, since it seemed to
be you know, uh, maybe a wildcat that lived on
the grounds, I hope she lived out a good and

(12:27):
long life, eating all of the pigeons without having to
share them. Uh sorry, pigeons. Coming up, we will talk
about a wartime cat who is said to have had
extraordinary good luck. But first we are going to pause
for a sponsor break. Some cats appear in history with

(12:49):
several different names, really making the most of their nine
lives to take on various identities. Uh. That is the
case with this World War two cat, although there are
also some real questions about whether these really were all
the same cat. We'll talk about that at the end.
And this story starts aboard the German battleship Bismarck. The
Bismarck was one of the largest warships European manufacturers ever produced,

(13:13):
and it was made to withstand a lot. It was
designed for the German Navy with armor as its primary attribute,
and that was at the expense of speed and gunpower,
and when the Bismarck was first launched in February thirty nine,
it was apparent to British forces that it was formidable.
The Bismarck also had a sister ship, the Turpids, so

(13:38):
the two of them made for this really daunting addition
to the German fleet. When World War Two officially started
on September one, nineteen thirty nine, it was understood that
the Bismarck was a key part of the Nazi naval effort. Yeah,
it didn't have its first mission though. For a while.
In May ninety one, the Bismarck was part of Operation Reineberg.

(14:00):
It was sent along with the heavy cruiser Prince Usion
into the North Atlantic to attack Allied convoys. The Bismarck
was there to engage with the heavier escort ships. On.
The Bismarck and Prince Usion engaged with the battle cruiser
HMS Hood and the battleship Prince of Wales in what
has come to be known as the Battle of the

(14:20):
Denmark Straight. The Hood was sunk and the Prince of
Wales got three shell hits on the Bismarck, but the
German ship managed to get away and limped towards occupied France.
The British Navy tracked the Bismarck and continued to attack
on the Bismarck sank in the North Atlantic. Of its
two thousand, two hundred man crew, you will see anywhere

(14:42):
from one fourteen to one eighteen listed as the number
of survivors. But's obviously the very short version of the
life of the Bismarck. But you'll notice we haven't mentioned
a feline yet, and that is because the cat in
question is said to have been found in the wreckage
the Bismark, floating on a piece of debris, was rescued

(15:04):
by the HMS Cossack, a Tribal class destroyer that had
been part of the group that was pursuing the Bismarck.
This rescue was referenced by a famous portrait of the cat,
which the crew called Oscar, sometimes with the German spelling
of os K a r. British artist Georgina shaw Baker
did this. It's a pastel portrait with Oscar sitting adrift

(15:26):
on a board, turning to look at the viewer. So,
according to the story, once aboard the Cossack, Oscar became
part of that crew and thus switched sides in the
war as well. For the next several months, he was
the mascot for the Cossack, which ran primarily as an
escort ship for convoys. Those are the very convoys that
the Bismarck and other German ships had been attacking. On October,

(15:49):
the Cossack was escorting an Allied convoy from Gibraltar to
Britain when it was torpedoed by a German U boat.
A section of the boat exploded and more than one
hundred crew members were killed. The rest of the crew
transferred to another ship, the HMS Legion, with the intention
that the still floating Cossack would be towed back to Gibraltar,

(16:09):
but conditions made that impossible, and the Cossack actually sank
three days after the torpedo strike on October, but while
Oscar had not transferred over to the Legion, history goes on,
he was rescued, once again clinging to floating debris and
then taking to Gibraltar with the rest of the surviving crew.
At this point his name changed to Unsinkable Sam for

(16:32):
obvious reasons, since Sam had a temperament that seemed to
be well suited to life at sea. At this point,
he was soon part of another crew, this time aboard
the h M s Arc Royal, which was an aircraft
carrier that had actually been involved in the destruction of
the Bismarck. The Ark Royal had a reputation for luck.
It had narrowly avoided torpedo strikes and number of times,

(16:55):
and it had actually even been falsely reported by the
Germans as a successful hit even when it was not.
But once again Sam found himself on a sinking ship.
Less than three weeks after Unsinkable Sam went aboard the
Arc Royal, it took a torpedo hit that was on
November four one man died, but the rest of the

(17:16):
crew and unsinkable Sam survived. Sam was probably getting used
to hanging onto debris and awaiting rescue, and that method
worked once again. This time. He was described when he
was plucked from the water as quote angry but quite unharmed. Uh.
He was rescued by the HMS Legion. That was the
same ship that had taken the survivor, so the Cossack

(17:37):
aboard when it was hit. Whether it was because he
was considered unlucky at this point or whether officials just
thought this poor cat had had enough. Sam was retired
from service at sea after the Ark Royal's demise. He
was given a new job, though he was a MOUs
er in the Governor of Gibraltar's office complex. He did

(17:58):
not stay there permanently, though. He eventually landed in Ireland,
where he became the mascot and companion at a home
for retired sailors in Belfast. Sam allegedly lived there until
he died of natural causes an old age in nineteen five,
And that would have meant all of those sinking and
survival adventures had happened when he was really a very

(18:19):
young cat. Yeah, that Uh, he would have been. If
he was a newborn, then he would have been fourteen,
which is you know, old for a cat, not ancient,
but you know, mature. And uh, he was an adult
cat when they first found him, So that makes mid
least fifteen surely, and probably a little older. Uh, you
might be thinking, all of this seems really hard to

(18:39):
believe cat plucked out of the ocean thrice aboard a
piece of debris. And there have absolutely been questions about
Unsinkable Sam's story over the years. The Bismarck portion of
the story in particular is not well documented. None of
the survivor accounts ever mentioned a cat, but that also

(19:00):
would likely have been a trivial enough matter that it
might not have come up. Additionally, while there is no
official paperwork on record of the Bismarck having a cat
on board, there has certainly been speculation over the years
that one of the German sailors snuck him on, or
simply that he had managed to get aboard while the
ship was in doc There's also a problem with the
Bismarck segment of the story because photos that have been

(19:23):
used as images of Oscar slash Unsinkable Sam Uh some
of those images are clearly not the same cat. One
is a Tabby, but the photo is black and white,
so the colors aren't obvious. Baker's portrait is clearly a
black and white tuxedo cat, and all the other photos

(19:44):
of Oscar slash Unsinkable Sam are also black and white tuxedos.
It's a little unclear where that Tabby photo originated, so
it's impossible to know if something just got mixed up
somewhere along the line, or if two different cats story
Rea's got commingled into sailors stories over the years, or
maybe if there's some other explanation. Oh, but the tuxedo

(20:08):
cat images also come with some problems. Uh. There is
a particular photo that you will often see in articles
about Unsinkable Sam, and it is a black and white tuxedo.
But that cat has a tag on his collar that
clearly reads HMS Amethyst nine. Now, the Amethyst did have
a tuxedo cat that was the ship's mascot in nine. That's,

(20:30):
of course, eight years after all of this Sam business.
That cat's name was Simon. Though if you do an
online search for Unsinkable Sam, you'll realize that it quickly
becomes tricky to figure out what pictures of a tuxedo
cat might be Sam and which might be Simon. There
are a lot of pictures of tuxedos with British sailors,
and they look a lot alike, although if you really

(20:53):
really look closely at them, you might be able to
make out a subtle difference in the color demarcation in
their faces, but they are very similar. I even saw
one picture that was attributed to Unsinkable Sam that looks
like it might be a longer haired cat than either
of them, and it might have slightly more black on
its face than either of them had, So it becomes
very very tricky this Sam story. Uh, And that portrait

(21:15):
by Georgina Shawn Baker has slightly different facial markings than
either Sam or Simon. That could just be a matter
of artistic license. Though that artwork is in the collection
of the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, it's currently not
on display there, so there's no real hard evidence of
the seeming miracle cat that survived three different ship singings

(21:39):
during wartime. That whole idea persists that because it's a
good story. Who doesn't want to think that a little
kitty survived all of this mayhem and the horrors of
war and became much beloved by various crews no matter what,
uh what side of this business they were on. Our

(21:59):
last cat is one of those animals that is something
of a character, and he was quite lovingly documented by
the people who knew him. And I love his story.
And we're going to talk about the Museum feline after
we first hear from the sponsors who keep stuff you
missed in history class going. Our next historical cat will

(22:23):
appeal to listeners who, like me, have a soft spot
for cantankerous animals. Uh, this is about Mike the cat,
who guarded the British Museum from dogs and other menaces
for two decades. The story of Mike the Cat starts
with another cat called black Jack. He was described as
black with quote a white shirt front and pause. So

(22:47):
another tuxedo. I know some folks who love tuxedos the
best of all cats, so it doesn't really surprise me.
I think we know some of the same people who
suxedo is the best of all. So black Jack often
visited the Department of Printed Books at the museum and
was friendly with everyone. But then one day in n eight,

(23:08):
he got shut into the reading room and tore up
the bindings of some of the books while sharpening his claws. Naturally,
he was no longer welcome. One of the staff had
been tasked with getting rid of him, but black Jack
was nowhere to be found. He had actually been rescued
by the staff was being fed elsewhere. Uh official reports

(23:31):
that were that he had disappeared and was presumed to
have died, but black Jack, like a phoenix, rose from
the ashes. Black Jack reappeared not long after all of this.
Several weeks had gone by, carrying a kitten, which he
brought to a staff member of the museum, fittingly, the
keeper of Egyptian Antiquities, who, it's often referenced, normally cared

(23:53):
for mummified cats. Yes, you may be wondering. I wondered
too if black Jack wasn't a lady cat who vanned
to have kittens and then brought one back to a
place she knew was safe, But there is no real
discussion on that point in the documentation. I found that
kitten the black Jack brought back was named Mike, and
Mike was welcomed and taken care of, and black Jack
also stuck around h and as Mike got older, he

(24:17):
started to stroll around the grounds of the British Museum
and he became pretty good friends with the gatekeepers. Mike
lived what sounds like a pretty fun life for a cat,
and he would catch pigeons and bring them home, although
he did not seem interested in eating them. The housekeepers
would then rescue these dazed birds and nurse them back
to health and set them free again, and during visits

(24:39):
to the museum he was given scraps by the waitresses
who worked in the cafe there. Life for Riley Um.
Mike eventually started spending more time at the museum gatehouse
than anywhere else, and over time that became his house.
But museum staff made sure he stayed fed. Uh just
at the gatehouse instead of his former abode. Talk about

(25:00):
the person who was really his caretaker and uh the
gatekeepers themselves took care of him as well. An account
of Mike's life states quote the keeper of the mummied
cats took care to feed him during the lean years
of the war, and whoever went short, Mike did not.
He owed much to the three kind hearted gatekeepers who
cooked his food for him and treated him as a

(25:20):
man and brother. Mike apparently hated dogs. It was written
quote the dogs that laughed at policemen and gatekeepers fled
in terror before the attack of Mike, who, swelling himself
to twice his normal size, hurled himself on them. Whereas
Blackjack seemed friendly with almost everyone, Mike was a little

(25:41):
pickier and he could interact with him. Apparently, he liked
the company of men over women, and was said to
have ripped up many ladies gloves when they tried to
pet him. Cantanker is cat as many cantanker as cats.
Mike lived a very long life, and as his age
crept up into the late teens, he started to have

(26:03):
problems with his teeth, which many cants do, and so
the gatekeepers and the other staff always ensured that he
only had the softest pieces of fish or meat to eat.
Mike is unlike the other cats we've discussed today, because
his life was documented by the people at the museum,
who loved him in spite of this less than cuddly disposition,

(26:24):
as well as by the press. A tabby guarding the
British Museum was a great story for reporters. The Star
which was an evening paper in London, ran a piece
on July twenty one that read quote, in its day,
no cat has lived so public a life as Mike,
the big tabby that keeps watching ward at the gate

(26:45):
at the British Museum. The same article later proclaimed quote,
no scholar can be quite as wise as museum Mike looks.
And Mike really did have a look about him. Um.
There are a couple of photos of him which lay
evidence his personality. In one which has labeled Mike in
a benevolent mood after a fish lunch sitting for his portrait,

(27:08):
Mike is sitting upright and he looks even with a
full tummy and presumably quite sated, like a cat you
would just not want to mess with. And in another photo,
Mike is shown standing on all fours with his mouth open.
He looks like he's yelling, and it was labeled by
his caretaker Mike expressing his opinion of a dog he
had just run out of the courtyard of the museum.

(27:30):
Mike died on January fifteenth, nineteen nine, at the age
of twenty. He was so well known and beloved that
even Time magazine ran an obituary for him to honor
museum Mike's memory. E. A. Wallace Budge, keeper of Egyptian
and Assyrian antiquities for the museum, and the person who
cared for Mike from his kitten hood and stayed his

(27:53):
favorite person throughout his life, wrote a pamphlet about this
feline friend. That work opens with quote, the US little
pamphlet had been prepared at the request of many friends
of Mike, readers past and present in the British Museum,
members of the staff, and admirers of Mike on the
continent and in America, And that pamphlet actually became well

(28:14):
known in its own right, so much so that a
year after Mike's passing, on January, Time magazine proclaimed quote
copies of what English Cat Lover's Prize as the budget
monograph on Mike reached Manhattan last week, so it made
news what it was available here in the States. The

(28:34):
brief write up about its availability to US readers compared
the Mike pamphlet to budgets other scholarly work, calling it
quote the acme of obital biography, fit to rank with
his monumental coptic history of Elijah, the Tish Bite, the
pamphlet also includes a poem about Mike by F. C. W. Highly,
assistant keeper in the Department of Printed Books. It's quite

(28:56):
a long poem, so we won't read the whole thing,
but we have to excerpts, which paint a vivid picture
of the tabby Mike. The first reads He'd sit and
sun himself sedately. No sphinx or segment looked more stately.
He cared not in the very least for human being,
bird or beast. He let the pigeons eat their phil

(29:19):
nor even one was known to kill, but scared them
if they strayed to nigh by the sole terror of
his eye. Highly also includes four lines in the poem
about how Mike bid him once and that he probably
deserved it for bothering him. Uh. He also goes on
about how Mike really, really truly loved Sir Ernest Budge,

(29:42):
who seemed to have a magical effect on his surly feline,
and the final lines of the poem. I was reading
this poem, and I was like in tears because clearly,
like so many people love this cat. But then I
read the final lines and I started laughing so loud.
My husband ran upstairs to see if I was okay,
and they, oh, Mike, farewell, we all regret you, although

(30:03):
you would not let us pet you. Of cats, the wisest, oldest,
best cat. This beer motto requiescat. So. The British Museum
marked the fiftieth anniversary of Mike's death with another pamphlet,
which was a modernized and abridged one of the cartoon illustrations.
They titled it Mike the Cat, a Jubilee Reminiscence. Yeah.

(30:25):
Both of those pamphlets are available online. They are so
fun to read. And if you are a person who
is ever just you know, bend very attached to an animal. Uh.
It's it's so apparent in the language of the writing
that Budge did about Mike, how much he really loved
this cat who was a grouch. It's really quite incredibly charming. Um.

(30:50):
So those are our three upbeat historical cats for today.
To continue the animal love fest. Um I have a
listener mail about our listener Maggie, who was prompted to
write in after I told the story of Mr Burns
killing our room. Ba Uh, Maggie, rids Hi, Tracy and Holly.

(31:12):
Of course it's the fat cat on roomba story that
gets me to finally write in history. Now, let me
tell you about my aspiring robot pilot. I have an
ancient room BA two thousand eight model that plays the
same song and has the button on top. That's basically
what I described in my story. I also have a
semi free range pet rat who discovered she can turn
the room Ba on. While she likes to write it

(31:34):
as it backs off of its station with that cute
backing up beep. She is completely startled every time the
brushes kick in and runs appropriately for safety. Whenever I
hear the startup song unexpectedly, I rush over to turn
the room Ba off because I'm worried about the safety
of her tiny tail. She generally is unimpressed by my urgency.

(31:54):
Then one day I had my headphones on. Fria came
hurrying towards me and touched my feet with her tiny hands.
She looked stressed. I took off my headphones and heard
the rumba going wild in the living room. She had
set loose the robot and I didn't do my part,
and now the world was chaos. Her tail was fine.
It's been about three months and she hasn't started the ruma.

(32:14):
Since I'm thinking of building her one of those electric
rat cars instead, and since she likes to push buttons,
we're working on language buttons. Our first word is snuggle.
She hasn't gotten a grasp on the button yet, but
she flattens out for pets anytime she hears the word. Now.
I hope you and all your family members human and
beast are doing well and continuing to have tiny adventures. Maggie.
I love this story so much. Um. I also love

(32:38):
any stories about when people are training their pets to
like make communication bridges with them. Um. Those are always
fascinating to me and I absolutely love, love, love, love
love them. Um. I also want to make sure I
thank Reagan and Mary for writing to tell us that
my Mr Burns story made them laugh. Um. You know,
as I mentioned, Mr Burns left earlier this year, it's

(33:01):
something I have really struggled with to a ridiculous degree
by some people's standards, I'm sure. So it it makes
me happy that he who is a punchline cat, continues
to make people laugh because he was a very ugly
cat that I thought was beautiful, I mean, a fat,
dirty looking devon rex Mr Burns so that delighted me,

(33:21):
and I'm glad that is his legacy to make people giggle. Still,
if you would like to write to us about your
poorly behaved or delightful or angelic animals, those exist too.
You can do so at History Podcast at i heeart
radio dot com. You can also find us on social media,
and you can subscribe to the show on the i
heeart Radio app or anywhere you listen to your favorite podcasts.

(33:49):
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