Josephine Aufdenblatten of Geneva.
History doesn’t explain why the kitten elected to follow the men—only that it eventually pursued them all the way to the summit. Figuring the beleaguered creature had used up more than a couple of its nine lives, one of the climbers carried it back down to sea level in his rucksack.
SCARLETT
THE CAT WHO BECAME
AN ACTION HERO
Overnight, a scrawny New York City feline went from anonymous stray to international hero. The transformation happened, literally, in a flash.
A flash of fire, that is. The saga began in March 1996, when a blaze consumed an East New York garage. As the battle against the conflagration wound down, firefighters noticed three four-week-old kittens huddled near the building’s front door, crying in fear. Across the street sat two more. A badly burned calico female paced nervously between the two groups.
It didn’t take long for firefighter David Giannelli to figure out what had happened. Giannelli, whose soft spot for pets earned him the nickname “the animal guy” in East New York’s Ladder Company 75, guessed that during the fire, the mother cat had dashed repeatedly into the blaze to rescue her kittens. Now she was in the process, in spite of her severe injuries, of moving them to a new hiding place.
The firefighter scooped up the mother and babies and took them to the North Shore Animal League in Port Washington, New York. The staff, sensing a chance for a little publicity, told the story to a local TV station. The agency got morethan a little publicity. Everyone from CNN to the BBC picked up the tale, and soon people from as far away as Cairo and Japan were writing and phoning the shelter.
The mother was named Scarlett, because of the livid color of her burns. Sadly, one of the kittens died of an infection. But the other four made strong recoveries. As the family convalesced together, thousands of adoption offers flooded in from around the world. Finally, two kittens named Samsara and Tanuki were given to a Port Washington family; the other two, Cinders and Oreo, found their way to Hampton Bays, New York.
Heroic Scarlett found a home with the Wellen family in Brooklyn. Her scars healed, and the only remaining signs of her travails were her rather poor vision and the amputated tips of her ears. Her new owners have also helped heal any emotional scars. “She’s a total love machine,” a family member told the New York Times . The formerly scrawny stray is also, apparently, an eating machine. After her rescue she ballooned to seventeen pounds—quite a change from her days as an action heroine.
MOURKA
THE CAT WHO SERVED AT
STALINGRAD
No single World War II battle proved as costly as the struggle for Stalingrad. For 199 days, German forces tried to wrest control of the Soviet city (now called Volgograd) from the Red Army. The Nazis were finally repelled, but at the almost unimaginable cost of two million lives.
The victory demanded incredible feats of heroism. Remarkably, one of the bravest of the brave wasn’t a soldier, but a cat named Mourka. During the bitter street fighting inside the city, exposing oneself for even a moment was tantamount to suicide. For one squad assigned to find and report the location of German artillery positions, the only way to get information back to headquarters was by hand—until they received unexpected help in the form of Mourka. The stray cat could run notes back and forth unobserved, sparing his human comrades terrible risk. His contribution to the war effort was duly noted in the Times (UK), which said of the intrepid feline: “He has shown himself worthy of Stalingrad, and whether for cat or man there can be no higher praise.”
PRECIOUS
THE CAT WHO SURVIVED 9/11
During a crisis, average citizens may discover they possess undreamed-of reserves of heroism and grit. Such was the case for many New Yorkers on September 11, 2001. And such was especially the case for a pampered nine-pound Persian cat named
History doesn’t explain why the kitten elected to follow the men—only that it eventually pursued them all the way to the summit. Figuring the beleaguered creature had used up more than a couple of its nine lives, one of the climbers carried it back down to sea level in his rucksack.
SCARLETT
THE CAT WHO BECAME
AN ACTION HERO
Overnight, a scrawny New York City feline went from anonymous stray to international hero. The transformation happened, literally, in a flash.
A flash of fire, that is. The saga began in March 1996, when a blaze consumed an East New York garage. As the battle against the conflagration wound down, firefighters noticed three four-week-old kittens huddled near the building’s front door, crying in fear. Across the street sat two more. A badly burned calico female paced nervously between the two groups.
It didn’t take long for firefighter David Giannelli to figure out what had happened. Giannelli, whose soft spot for pets earned him the nickname “the animal guy” in East New York’s Ladder Company 75, guessed that during the fire, the mother cat had dashed repeatedly into the blaze to rescue her kittens. Now she was in the process, in spite of her severe injuries, of moving them to a new hiding place.
The firefighter scooped up the mother and babies and took them to the North Shore Animal League in Port Washington, New York. The staff, sensing a chance for a little publicity, told the story to a local TV station. The agency got morethan a little publicity. Everyone from CNN to the BBC picked up the tale, and soon people from as far away as Cairo and Japan were writing and phoning the shelter.
The mother was named Scarlett, because of the livid color of her burns. Sadly, one of the kittens died of an infection. But the other four made strong recoveries. As the family convalesced together, thousands of adoption offers flooded in from around the world. Finally, two kittens named Samsara and Tanuki were given to a Port Washington family; the other two, Cinders and Oreo, found their way to Hampton Bays, New York.
Heroic Scarlett found a home with the Wellen family in Brooklyn. Her scars healed, and the only remaining signs of her travails were her rather poor vision and the amputated tips of her ears. Her new owners have also helped heal any emotional scars. “She’s a total love machine,” a family member told the New York Times . The formerly scrawny stray is also, apparently, an eating machine. After her rescue she ballooned to seventeen pounds—quite a change from her days as an action heroine.
MOURKA
THE CAT WHO SERVED AT
STALINGRAD
No single World War II battle proved as costly as the struggle for Stalingrad. For 199 days, German forces tried to wrest control of the Soviet city (now called Volgograd) from the Red Army. The Nazis were finally repelled, but at the almost unimaginable cost of two million lives.
The victory demanded incredible feats of heroism. Remarkably, one of the bravest of the brave wasn’t a soldier, but a cat named Mourka. During the bitter street fighting inside the city, exposing oneself for even a moment was tantamount to suicide. For one squad assigned to find and report the location of German artillery positions, the only way to get information back to headquarters was by hand—until they received unexpected help in the form of Mourka. The stray cat could run notes back and forth unobserved, sparing his human comrades terrible risk. His contribution to the war effort was duly noted in the Times (UK), which said of the intrepid feline: “He has shown himself worthy of Stalingrad, and whether for cat or man there can be no higher praise.”
PRECIOUS
THE CAT WHO SURVIVED 9/11
During a crisis, average citizens may discover they possess undreamed-of reserves of heroism and grit. Such was the case for many New Yorkers on September 11, 2001. And such was especially the case for a pampered nine-pound Persian cat named
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