With the 2023 baseball season upon us, the story of the Brooklyn Robins feline mascot is a great “Did You Know?” story to share with the cat lovers and baseball fans in your life.
The story also has ties to the Old Stone House of Gowanus, where hundreds of Maryland soldiers lost their lives while trying to save George Washington and his troops during the Revolutionary War.
This is Part 1 of a two-part story.
Here is the fun tale of Mike, the female Williamsburg Post Office cat. Not only was Mike misnamed, she was “missent.” If there had been an Internet back then, this story would have surely gone viral.
When Cheechee disappeared from the Central Court Cigar Store at the corner of Schermerhorn and Smith Streets just a few weeks before Christmas in 1949, everyone in the neighborhood lost some of their holiday cheer. Kids from one to 92 would not have a merry Christmas until Santa brought her back safely.
Many old stories have been told of the Brooklyn-born canine and feline mascots that went to sea (like Peggy and Tom of the USS Maine, as an example), but this tale, which takes place at Pier 12 of the New York Dock Company, is about a landlubber dog and cat who patrolled the Brooklyn waterfront.
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.
