A week of remarkable cats
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The week started off with Tama, the Japanese cat appointed stationmaster after humans were laid off. Then there was the story of C.C., the feline defender of the Alamo. Have cats always been in the news doing unusual things, or are they just getting a lot of attention lately? And then we discovered the list of storied felines put together by the Pet Blog. ‘...there are many, many exemplary cats out there -- they just shun publicity,’ writes Julie.
Probably most legendary was Oscar, a German cat who survived explosions aboard three vessels--a battleship, then a submarine and finally an aircraft carrier--on both the German and British sides during World War II, earning him the moniker ‘Unsinkable Sam.’
And more recently there was Fred, a Brooklyn tabby enlisted as an undercover agent in 2006 to pose as a would-be patient while police investigated a college student accused of treating pets without a license. Looking elsewhere, I found a cat that supposedly dialed 911, an another, named Winnie, who roused her owners with meows and nudges, apparently to alert them that poisonous carbon monoxide was filling their home. She is pictured at right with her Indiana family.
The stories are so ubiquitious that I eventually came to the conclusion that cats are actually in the limelight quite a bit, despite what Julie claims. Animal Planet even has an annual cat hero of the year award.
-- Tony Barboza
