Archive for the ‘Feline Mascots’ Category

The new electric traffic lights on 4th Avenue in Brooklyn were confusing to some motorists and pedestrians. But not to Nickie, the black cat of Motorcycle Squad No. 2 adjoining the former 18th Precinct police station on the southwest corner of 4th Avenue and 43rd Street in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park.

October is Black Cats of Old New York Month!

On September 19, 1904, Captain William Dean of the NYPD Harbor Police contacted the New York Times to brag about the rescue of a large black cat. The cat, which the men named Mike, joined another black cat named Fanny on the Harbor Police patrol boat.

For fifteen years, Morris served as the ever-watchful feline mascot and mouser of the Sheepshead Bay police station, which was located in the Homecrest neighborhood of Sheepshead Bay. As official police cat of the 68th Precinct, it was his job to nab the rats and other vermin with which the rural district was infested.

One day after Tige, the police cat of the NYPD headquarters building, gave birth to four kittens, a detective recorded their paw prints on official NYPD fingerprint sheets.

In March 1916, the Richmond Hill Police precinct, which covered all of Richmond Hill, Woodhaven, Morris Park, and part of Forest Hills, was designated a mounted precinct. That is, every mounted police officer throughout Queens was transferred to the 283rd Precinct in Richmond Hill.

With more horses came more stables — and more vermin. What the Richmond Hill Police needed was a good to mouser to handle all the rats and mice that shared the stables with the horses.