Posts Tagged ‘Cats of Old New York’

Henry Ward Beecher was an American clergyman, social reformer, and speaker known for his support of the abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage, and Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, to name just a few of his passionate causes. Imagine my surprise when I learned that he was also a cat man!

Mrs. James L. Ward, a widow and proverbial “crazy cat lady,” took a lease of the top floor above Jack’s Restaurant in July 1910. At that time, she had two cats, a pug dog, and a parrot. But then the cats had two cats, and they had two cats, and so on, and so on…

In my last two posts, I wrote about the Army cats of New York City’s Army Building on Whitehall Street and the black cat mascot of the New York Tank Corps. This next story for Military Appreciation Month goes to the dogs. The military dogs of Governors Island.

In September 1918, the New York Times reported that the Tank Corps men of new York had placed an advertisement for a black cat to serve as its mascot. The corps used a viscous-looking black cat on its recruiting posters, so the men in New York thought it would be great to have a live cat that could serve as a mascot as well as an attraction at an upcoming benefit event.

In Old New York, most warehouses and other large buildings in Lower Manhattan were infested with mice and rats (many still are, of course). Despite its military affiliation, the U.S. Army Building was not immune to the enemy vermin. The best soldiers cut out for the job of extermination were the Army cats.