After reading the Iditarod racer profiles today and watching four-time champion Lance Mackey moved to tears about a dog who once saved his life, I asked a friend if any cat ever saved anyone?
Credit was given for ridding mice and disease, lowering blood pressure, etc. Then she told me an odd family history story. Her dad hadn’t been pleased when he first found out she was moving here. His relatives moved away long ago after many hardships (one had been a gambler musician who disappeared one night.) But her great uncle had worked as a Duluth fumigator.
Factories would often keep cats around to try and keep mice down. I guess one particular cat wasn’t pulling its weight, so they called her great uncle, the fumigator, who after gassing, went back into the building to get the cat out. The deadly factor of cyanide (which they used to fumigate in those days) was no doubt lesser known then. So that’s how he died in some Duluth factory in the 1930s, trying to save a cat.
Cats may mark you as their property, but dogs lay around dreaming up their next chance to rescue your ass with no regard for their own safety. Expecting our pets to save us might be unrealistic though, if we can’t even save ourselves. (See PBS’s Nova show on dogs to further understand this ancient bond).
