The Hatching Cat of Gotham

Lieutenant Lussier Leaves Commissioner Behind

In February 1908, Lieutenant John J. Lussier retired from the New York Police Department. He and his family left their home at 169 Taylor Street in Brooklyn, and moved to Utica, New York. There, the former lieutenant for the Brooklyn Bridge Squad took over the proprietorship of the Yates House hotel.

According to The New York Sun, when John Lussier left Brooklyn, he took almost all his belongings. Naturally, his wife, Margaret, and their three children (Marie, 12, Anthony Russell, 11, and Helen, 9) also joined him upstate.

The one possession he left behind in Brooklyn, however, was his favorite police cat, Commissioner.

So, imagine his surprise when the cat showed up at the Yates Hotel in Utica two months later! Not only did John wonder how the cat made the trip from Brooklyn to Utica, he was also shocked that the kitty was still alive. The last time John saw Commissioner, she was jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge into the East River!

The Police Cat and the Lieutenant

No one knows how long Commissioner had been in John Lussier’s life before he left for Utica. However, the president of the Downtown Natural History Club told The Sun that he thought the cat had been with him for many years, going back to when Lussier was still working as a police officer in the Old Slip police station. When Lussier transferred over to the Brooklyn Bridge Squad—then headquartered at 179 Washington Street—the cat crossed the Brooklyn Bridge with him and made herself at home in Brooklyn.

According to the history club president, the police officers of the Brooklyn Bridge Squad adopted Lussier’s cat as their official station cat. They agreed to put the cat on the same footing as the humans with regards to promotions. Thus, they called her Doorman until she had her first litter of kittens, which earned her the title of Patrolman. With each litter, her name changed to Sergeant, Captain, and Inspector.

“Of course the boys weren’t counting on the names running out as soon as they did, but anyway, inside of a year the cat’s name was Inspector,” the man told The Sun reporter. “Then it was decided to call the cat Fourth Deputy Commissioner, and finally she was entitled to the title Commissioner.”

One of the most interesting events in Commissioner’s NYPD career was when she encountered Whiskers, the popular station house rat of Old Slip. The old First Precinct police station at 100 Old Slip was a favorite retreat for the many rats on the neighboring docks. The rats would enter the station and toy with the desk sergeant late at night, when no one else was around.

“Lussier didn’t warm up to any of these rats, except Whiskers,” the historian told the reporter. “He had a natural prejudice against rats, but Whiskers did him a service that he couldn’t overlook.”

According to the historian, late one night, while Lussier was dosing at his desk, he was awoken by a rat that was squealing in his ears and pulling at one end of his large mustache. Lussier opened his eyes just in time to see the police commissioner hustling up to his desk. Had the rat not alerted him, he would have been caught sleeping on the job when the commissioner arrived.

Lussier reportedly felt that such an act deserved official recognition, so he named the rat Whiskers and put him on the roll as an un-salaried attache along with the cat. Lussier had some trouble establishing a friendship between the two station pets, but as the rat was almost as big as the cat, they eventually got along well for a long time.

Well, no surprise, the friendship didn’t last forever. One day, after another batch of kittens had arrived, Lussier took Whiskers in to introduce him to the newest members of Commissioner’s family. The mother cat was not there, so he left the rat with the kittens while he went to answer a telephone call.

When Lussier returned to the litter, Commissioner had Whiskers in her jaws and was beating him against the hard floor. Apparently, she mistook him for another rat and went into attack mode, as any normal mother cat would do. Lussier blamed himself for the rat’s death.

Commissioner Jumps Off the Brooklyn Bridge

Although Commissioner the cat was quite welcome at the Brooklyn Bridge Squad headquarters on Washington Street, she wasn’t too crazy about the squad’s dingy accommodations in the basement. So, she spent most of her days by the Brooklyn Bridge, where she would cross back and forth with Lieutenant Lussier while he was on patrol.

Apparently, Commissioner followed the lieutenant quite often. According to The Sun, Lussier often took trips on the weekends to visit relatives in Utica. Commissioner would follow him to Grand Central Station to see him off; when he arrived back home, she would be waiting on the platform for the train from Utica.

On the last night that Lussier crossed the Brooklyn Bridge–the day he retired from the force–Commissioner met him on the Brooklyn side as usual. The two walked together to the middle of the bridge. Commissioner let out a sudden cry, and then jumped off the bridge and plunged into the river. Lussier assumed the cat knew they were going to be separated soon, and so she committed suicide out of grief.

Commissioner Arrives in Utica

After reading this story, you can now imagine how shocked Lussier was when his cat turned up alive and well at the Yates House Hotel.

Lussier surmised that the cat walked all the way there. He also offered a reward to anyone who could explain how the cat made the trip. (I’d like someone to tell me how she survived her fall into the East River and how she made it back to shore!)

The history club president thought otherwise: “I know that the cat wasn’t in the Police Department so many years for nothing,” he told the reporter. “What she did was go up to Grand Central Station, find the Utica train, and jump on the blind baggage.”

I must now admit that another article published in the same newspaper two weeks earlier states that Lussier had left his cat with a friend in Brooklyn before he moved. The friend wrote a letter to Lussier telling him that the cat had somehow escaped.

Either way, it’s a mystery how the cat made the trip from Brooklyn to Utica. (And I like the story of the Brooklyn Bridge better.)

John J. Lussier, a Prominent Brooklyn Resident

John Joseph Lussier, the son of Francis Xavier and Sarah Reynolds Lussier, was born in Brooklyn sometime around 1868 (he gave different birth years on multiple census reports). He married Margaret Flynn in 1893 and they had four children (in addition to Marie, Helen, and Anthony, they had a son, Sterling, who died at the age of 2 in1896.)

Following his extensive career with the police department, Lussier got into the hotel and restaurant business. In addition to the Yates Hotel in Utica, he also leased and operated the Hotel Metropole at 147-151 West 43rd Street (1915-1925) and he operated the Mansion House Hotel on Hicks Street in Brooklyn Heights (now the Mansion House Apartments) until 1925.

In 1925, Lussier built the Hotel London in London, Ontario, which he operated until 1934. He purchased the Bridgeway Hotel in Springfield, Massachusetts, in February 1937, which his son managed.

Lussier died at the age of 69 on November 29, 1937, in his apartment in the Bridgeway Hotel. He was buried at Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Kensico, NY.