100 Cats Who Changed Civilization Read online

  CC

  THE CAT WHO WAS A CLONE

  This cleverly named creature won fame for being both the most unique and un-unique of cats. Born in late 2001 in a blaze of publicity, CC (short for Copy Cat) was the world’s first cloned feline.

  The mostly gray calico was the crowning achievement of a research program originally established to clone dogs. In 1997, millionaire entrepreneur John Sperling bankrolled a roughly $4 million effort to develop a replacement for his beloved mutt, Missy. After years of work on what came to be known as the Missyplicity Project, scientists at Texas A&M University learned one key fact about cloning canines: It’s hard. Cats, however, are relatively easier.

  Emphasis on relatively. The group endured eighty-seven failures before producing CC. In 2000, Sperling and others founded a company to offer the process to grieving pet owners who pined for duplicates of their dearly departed friends—and could pay somewhere in the middle five figures to get them.

  The birth of CC seemed to validate the business model of the company that created her. Bereaved but well-heeled former cat owners could turn to an organization whose name, Genetic Savings & Clone, sounded like something from an old Outer Limits episode. The company ramped up its program to something approaching mass production. Clients with an eye toward the future could PetBank some of their cat’s premortem DNA for future use in the Nine Lives Extravaganza cloning program. Then, when the original pet passed away, scientists at the company’s state-of-the-art Madison, Wisconsin, laboratory could use that genetic information to create an embryo to be carried by a surrogate cat mom.

  Is it possible to put a price tag on such a miracle? Actually, yes. Cat owners can make a deposit in the PetBank for around $1,000, and get a copy of their kitty for roughly $32,000.

  Unfortunately for the company’s backers, not enough people wanted carbon copies of their deceased kitties. Genetic Savings & Clone went out of business in late 2006. Interestingly, even though the firm trafficked in clones, it couldn’t guarantee that the cats it created would be exact copies of the originals. Nature, it seems, hates to repeat itself. Though the company’s clones carried the same genetic code as the original animals, environmental factors sometimes introduced slight—or not-so-slight—variations. For instance, while CC is an exact genetic duplicate of her DNA donor (a calico tabby named Rainbow), her fur is a different color.

  ACOUSTIC KITTY

  THE CAT THE CIA TURNED

  INTO A BUG

  The mysterious world of espionage reached its pinnacle during the darkest days of the Cold War. As the Soviet Union and the West struggled for worldwide military and economic supremacy, no intelligence-gathering scheme seemed too wild or harebrained if it offered a chance, however small, of gaining vital information.

  Yet, even in the context of those desperate times, the CIA’s plan to turn a stray cat into an electronic intelligence gathering platform still sounds rather, well, nuts.

  The project was revealed to the public in 2001, when it was mentioned in a passel of heavily censored documents declassified by the CIA’s Science and Technology Directorate. According to experts, the scheme, hatched during the 1960s, was to wire felines with listening equipment so they could eavesdrop on conversations. The prototype, called Acoustic Kitty, was surgically implanted with microphones, batteries, and a radio receiver, along with an antenna running up its tail. The $16 million project came to an abrupt end, however, during field trials. The bionic cat was released near a park and was promptly run over by a taxi.

  It was a merciful finale for the poor creature. Perhaps God—or Mother Nature, or simply fate—realized that a bunch of idiots were tampering with biology’s most elegant design and decided to stage an intervention.

  ALL BALL

  THE CAT WHO PLAYED

  WITH A GORILLA

  Scientists once believed that the ability to make and use tools was a skill reserved only for humans. Now they’ve realized that creatures from chimps to certain kinds of birds can master this trick. So are there any behaviors that set us apart from the “lower” animals? Perhaps our inclination to keep other species as pets makes us unique.

  Or perhaps not.

  If the behavior of Koko the gorilla is any guide, other creatures crave this sort of companionship, too. The Woodside, California, resident, born in 1976, is world famous for her “speaking” ability. The scientists who care for her assert that she’s learned more than 1,000 American Sign Language symbols and uses them to communicate everything from her physical needs to her moods.

  In 1984, Koko reportedly told her keepers that she’d like to have a pet cat for her birthday present. Shortly thereafter, a litter of abandoned kittens was brought in for her to inspect. After carefully examining each one, she chose a tailless gray male who she named All Ball. Though Koko was of course far larger and much stronger than her fragile new charge, she treated him with great gentleness. All Ball was cuddled, kissed, and allowed to ride around on Koko’s back like a baby gorilla.

  Sadly, All Ball escaped from the compound in December 1984 and was killed by a car. Koko was inconsolable. She cried for days and tried to express her loss to her keepers through sign language. When someone asked what happened to her pet, Koko responded by signing “Sleep cat.” And when she was shown a picture of a kitten that looked like All Ball, she signed, “Cry, sad, frown.”

  Can a gorilla really communicate using language? Maybe, or maybe not. Some scientists wonder if Koko truly comprehends what she’s doing, or if, perhaps, the words she uses are merely wishful thinking on the part of the handlers who interpret for her. But what’s harder to dispute is the depth of the gorilla’s reaction to her small friend’s death. Koko may or may not be able to sign the word for grief, but she certainly seems to feel it.

  SCHRÖDINGER’S

  CAT

  THE MOST ENIGMATIC CAT IN

  OUR UNIVERSE. OR ANY UNIVERSE,

  FOR THAT MATTER

  For more than a century, physicists have struggled to understand quantum mechanics—the rules governing the behavior of subatomic particles. This is important because the knowledge is essential for everything from nuclear power to computer science to genetic engineering. But it’s also maddening, because these incredibly small objects don’t behave in ways the average person would consider normal. Or even rational.

  One of the most bedeviling problems is that while in the “big” universe one can chart the positions of planets and stars based on mathematical formulas, the subatomic world’s behavior can’t be easily predicted. For instance, it is physically impossible to determine both the momentum and precise position of an electron orbiting an atomic nucleus. What this means, in layman’s terms, is that our entire known world is constructed of things that can’t ever be known.

  Great minds have expended enormous quantities of chalk and covered numberless chalkboards trying to reconcile the operation of the tiny quantum universe with our “real” world. In 1934, physicist Erwin Schrödinger tried to illustrate those complexities by using, of all things, an imaginary cat.

  Schrödinger designed a thought experiment in which an atomic nucleus was used in a game of automated Russian roulette with a theoretical feline. Writing in the German magazine Natural Sciences, he ruminated about what might happen if a cat were placed in a sealed box with a canister of poison gas that was connected in some way to a radioactive atomic nucleus. The nucleus has an exactly 50 percent chance of decaying in one hour. If it does, its radiation will open the gas canister, killing the cat. If it doesn’t decay, the canister won’t open and the cat will survive.

  Here’s where things get strange. According to our understanding of quantum mechanics, subatomic particles such as the nucleus could exist in many states at once, until some sort of outside stimulus forced them into one course of action. In the world of quantum physics, the mere act of observation can accomplish this. In other words, someone looking at it could cause the nucleus to stop fluxing between multiple states and, in essence, pic
k a side. Thus, an observer who opened the box after an hour would find either a dead cat or a live cat.

  But what goes on inside the container before the human looks and forces the nucleus down one road or the other? According to some interpretations of quantum theory, inside this Twilight Zone of a box, both things happen at once. The nucleus is both decayed and undecayed, and the cat is both alive and dead. Furthermore, some physicists assert that when the box is finally opened and the results observed, both alternatives continue. Time and space split, and two entire universes shear off from each other—one in which the cat lives, the other in which it dies.

  Not surprisingly, Schrödinger’s enigmatic cat has become a feline celebrity among the learned. Sly references show up regularly in science fiction movies and television series such as Dr. Who and Futurama, and writers from Ursula K. Le Guin to Robert A. Heinlein have coopted the feline in their books.

  That’s a lot of press for an animal that isn’t real. However, fans can take comfort in the fact that while Schrödinger’s cat doesn’t exist in this corner of the space-time continuum, it may in some other bit of the quantum-ruled Multiverse.

  OTHER FELINES OF

  DISTINCTION

  THE FIRST KNOWN DOMESTIC CAT—Discovered by French archaeologists in a 9,500-year-old grave on the island of Cyprus. Near its final resting place sits the grave of (presumably) its human master.

  THE DOCTOR’S DEVILS—The nickname of matching black cats owned by eighteenth-century London quack Gustavus Katterfelto, who conned the gullible by displaying “scientific wonders” such as rudimentary electricity tricks. Katterfelto used the static that built up in the cats’ fur to, literally, put the spark in his presentations.

  SIZI—The prized pet of physician and theologian Dr. Albert Schweitzer. If Sizi fell asleep on Schweitzer’s left arm, he refused to use that limb until his feline friend moved of her own accord.

  TAMA—Created in 2000 by Japan’s Omron corporation, Tama was the first mass-produced robotic feline. Pressure sensors enabled her to detect and react to petting.

  THE HYPOALLERGENIC CAT—Recently produced by the San Diego-based company Allerca, these felines are genetically engineered to suppress a protein secretion that causes allergies.

  NADJEM

  THE FIRST CAT WITH A NAME

  It is widely believed that domestic cats evolved from the African wildcat, a tabby-like creature called Felis silvestris libyca, along the banks of the Nile River. The first farmers, desperate to defend their hard-won stores of grain from rats and mice, were doubtless overjoyed when these small, lithe predators took up residence near their granaries, looking for easy kills. They were so happy, in fact, that they perhaps went out of their way to attract them and to see to their comfort.

  It wasn’t long before those wild hunters became thoroughly domesticated, insinuating themselves not just into Egyptian homes, but into Egyptian culture as well. The cat goddess Bast became a popular cult figure, as did another, more sinister feline deity called Sekhmet. Felines in general were considered divine messengers, and killing one was taboo. Those who did so, even by accident, were often lynched on the spot by angry mobs. Pampered housecats wore earrings, nose rings, and expensive collars, and upon death they were often mummified and given lavish burials. Hundreds of thousands of cat mummies have been discovered all over Egypt.

  And yet, though their pictures adorned everything from palace walls to scrolls to jewelry, very little was written or said about individual cats. Most, it is believed, didn’t even have names. They were all referred to simply as mau, which literally means “he who mews.”

  That’s what makes one particular cat, who lived and died during the reign of Pharaoh Thutmose III (1479–1425 BC), so unique. The feline in question was called Nadjem (meaning “dear one” or, perhaps, “star”). Nadjem was mentioned on the wall of the tomb of a low-level functionary named Puimre, who was interred outside the ancient city of Thebes.

  There’s little else to say about Nadjem, other than that Puimre must have loved him (or her) a great deal. Too bad he can never know the enormity of the boon he bestowed upon his pet. By choosing to preserve his cat’s moniker for posterity, he made him (or her) the first feline in recorded history who we can call by name.

  MUEZZA

  THE CAT WHO WAS MOHAMMED’S

  FAVORITE PET

  Christianity has always viewed the cat with suspicion. Over the centuries the poor creature has been accused of every conceivable crime, from stealing the breath of newborns to serving as Satan’s minion. Islam, however, takes the opposite view. The cat is so highly esteemed that it is even allowed in mosques.

  Felines owe this exalted status to Muezza, the adored pet of the Prophet Mohammed. One day, as his faithful pet slept on one of the sleeves of his robe, Mohammed was called away to prayer. Rather than disturb the cat, he cut off the sleeve. When he returned, Muezza bowed to his master and received three strokes down her back in return. This blessing assured her a spot in the afterlife.

  According to other tales, Mohammed would give sermons in his home with Muezza nestled in his lap. The stories are unclear as to what type of cat she was. However, this hasn’t stopped feline fanciers around the world from stating that she was everything from a tabby to an Angora to an Abyssinian.

  DICK

  WHITTINGTON’S

  CAT

  THE CAT WHO LAUNCHED

  A POLITICAL CAREER

  Situated atop London’s Highgate Hill stands a statue of a feline known simply as Dick Whittington’s cat. According to legend, he belonged to a man named Richard Whittington, who lived from 1350 to 1423 and served as mayor of London four times. Yet it is doubtful he would be remembered at all were it not for the stories about his wonderful pet—a pet who, in real life, he probably never possessed.

  A great deal is known about the real Dick Whittington. He was the younger son of Sir William Whittington, Lord of the Manor of Pauntley in Gloucestershire. He made a fortune selling fine cloth and was on good terms with both King Richard II and his successor, King Henry IV. He married a woman named Alice Fitzwarren and, of course, served as London’s mayor. After his death, he willed his vast fortune to charity.

  And then something strange happened—something that would transform the real Whittington into the hero of a childhood fable. The people of London, anxious to know more about their benefactor, invented a biography that centered around, of all things, a cat. The centuries-old account casts Whittington as a poor country lad who came to the big city to make a name for himself. He worked for a merchant named Fitzwarren and fell in love with Alice, his daughter. His sole possession was a cat, whom he gave to a sea captain to sell during his voyage.

  Sometime afterward, Whittington decided to return to his hometown of Gloucestershire. But as he trudged past Highgate Hill he heard the city’s bells tolling. They seemed to say, “Turn again, Whittington, three times Lord Mayor of London.” So he went back to Fitzwarren’s house, where he learned that the captain he’d given his cat to had returned with incredible news. A foreign potentate whose palace was overrun by rats had bought the cat, paying with a huge pile of gold. Dick instantly became wealthy, married Alice, and eventually became Lord Mayor of London three times as predicted, plus an additional term.

  The tale became (and remains) a popular children’s story retold regularly in books, plays, and pantomimes. One doubts that the real Whittington would mind. The cat with whom he shares the limelight has won him lasting fame.

  THE CATERER

  THE CAT WHO USED PIGEONS

  TO HELP A JAILBIRD

  Throughout most of human history, politics was a winner-take-all proposition in which losers forfeited their fortunes and lives. Such was almost the case for Sir Henry Wyatt, who was born in Yorkshire, England, in 1460. During the two-year reign of King Richard III, he supported the claims of Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, to the throne. The king had Wyatt imprisoned in the Tower of London, where he was kept in freezing conditions, tor
tured, and fed a starvation diet.

  But one day a feline walked through the grate covering the cell’s window and made the acquaintance of the room’s emaciated inmate. Wyatt, overjoyed to have company, petted and praised the cat. The two became fast friends, and the stray promptly set about saving its human companion’s life by killing pigeons and fetching them to Wyatt’s cell.

  The famished prisoner gladly accepted them, and he convinced one of his jailers to dress and cook the birds. Soon the feline was referred to as Wyatt’s acater (caterer). Thus fortified, Wyatt held out against all adversity until, finally, Richard III was ousted from the throne by Henry Tudor, who was crowned Henry VII. Needless to say, the former prisoner’s prospects rapidly improved. He was freed from the Tower, given wealth and title, and lived to the ripe old age of eighty.

  Through it all he never forgot the kindness of the Tower cat, whose fate is unrecorded. One hopes that Wyatt found a way to help his benefactor, as he did almost every other cat he encountered. “Sir Henry in his prosperity would ever make much of a cat, and perhaps you will never find a picture of him anywhere, but with a cat beside him,” said one historical account.

  Today, the Church of St Mary the Virgin and All Saints in Maidstone features a stone memorial to Wyatt, “who was imprisoned and tortured in the Tower, in the reign of King Richard the third, kept in the dungeon, where fed and preserved by a cat.” The monument is a touchstone of sorts for the extended Wyatt family, which thrives in both the United States and Canada—and would be all but extinct were it not for one resourceful feline.