100 Cats Who Changed Civilization (2 page)

SNOWBALL

THE CAT WHO CAUGHT
A KILLER

Douglas Beamish thought he got away with murder. And he might have, if it weren’t for the case-making evidence furnished by his cat.

It happened in 1994, when Canadian authorities on Prince Edward Island found Shirley Duguay buried in a shallow grave. Royal Canadian Mounted Police were called in to investigate. They paid particular attention to a blood-soaked leather jacket in a plastic bag that had been buried along with the body. Unfortunately, the blood was all Duguay’s, and therefore useless for DNA comparisons. But forensics experts discovered something else: twenty-seven strands of white hair that, upon closer examination, were determined to come from a cat. The Mounties recalled that Beamish, Duguay’s estranged common-law husband, lived not too far from the grave site with his parents—and that they owned a white feline named Snowball.

The Mounties obtained a blood sample from Snowball, hoping to compare it to the DNA in the hairs. The problem, they soon discovered, was that no one had ever done such a thing before. After a series of calls, the authorities located perhaps the only people on the planet who could
help—a team of researchers at the National Cancer Institute’s Laboratory of Genomic Diversity in Frederick, Maryland, which was developing a map of the feline genome.

The academics had never before participated in a CSI-style criminal investigation, and it took some convincing to get them on board. Once they signed on, however, they were able to quickly isolate the genetic code in the jacket hairs and match it to the blood sample from Snowball. Using this evidence, and the expert testimony of the scientists who developed the technology, Beamish was convicted of murder and sent to prison. The case set a precedent for the use of cat DNA to place criminals at the scenes of crimes. Afterward, the U.S. Department of Justice awarded a $265,000 grant to create a National Feline Genetic Database. It developed the technology necessary to help forensics labs around the world trace cat hairs found at crime scenes to specific pets. Thanks to Snowball, criminals (about a third of whom own felines) can now be busted by their own furry friends.

MACEK

THE CAT WHO GLOWED
IN THE DARK

Physicist, electrical engineer, and inventor Nikola Tesla is considered one of the most prolific and enigmatic geniuses of all time. In addition to pioneering the systems that made home electricity practical, he was instrumental in developing radio. His more futuristic pursuits included building machines to communicate with extraterrestrials, creating remote-controlled vehicles, and even attempting to refute Einstein’s work on a unified field theory.

This was pretty heady stuff for a man born in 1856.

He was definitely ahead of his time. When Tesla, who became a U.S. citizen, died in a New York City hotel room in 1943 at the age of eighty-six, the FBI swooped down on his residence, rounded up his papers, and sealed them in a secret file. In his later years the great scientist was rumored to be tinkering with a “death ray.” The powers that be couldn’t afford not to believe it.

From his youth, Tesla was fascinated by the unknown—a fascination inspired by his cat. He grew up in an isolated farmhouse in what is now Croatia. As a child, his beloved companion was a large feline named Macek (Serbian for “male cat”). Tesla, who described his four-legged friend as “the
finest of all cats in the world,” went everywhere with him.

As a boy of three, Tesla displayed no particular interest in science. But during one particularly cold and dry winter day, a huge charge of static electricity built up in the atmosphere. People who walked in the snow left glowing footprints, and snowballs exploded like fireworks when they were thrown against walls or trees.

But that was nothing compared to what happened to Macek. “In the dusk of the evening, as I
stroked Macek’s back, I saw a miracle that made me speechless with amazement,” Tesla wrote in later years. “Macek’s back was a sheet of light and my hand produced a shower of sparks loud enough to be heard all over the house.” Even more amazing, when the cat walked through darkened rooms, he faintly glowed.

The sight fired the boy’s imagination, and sent him on a lifelong quest to understand electricity. Some say that Tesla, through his work, helped make the twentieth century possible. If so, then the world also owes a debt to Macek, who inspired him.

BLACKBERRY

THE QUEEN OF THE MUNCHKINS

Some cat breeds sport long hair, some short, some almost none. Some are lithe and athletic, others stocky and sedentary. All these differences have been readily accepted by cat fanciers, save one. In the early 1990s, the breeding community was set afire by a new kind of feline with very short legs. It was called the munchkin, and it is, without doubt, the world’s most controversial cat.

The saga began in 1983 in Rayville, Louisiana. A woman named Sandra Hochenedel found two cats trying to escape a bulldog by hiding under a pickup truck. Both were pregnant, and both had unusually short legs that made them look like a cross between a ferret and a dachshund. Hochenedel named the gray one Blueberry and gave it away. She named the black one Blackberry and kept it.

Blackberry promptly produced a litter of kittens, including a short-legged male. Hochenedel named him Toulouse and gave him to a friend, Kay LaFrance of Monroe, Louisiana. There Toulouse contributed enthusiastically to the local gene pool. Soon there were many short-legged cats and kittens slinking around the property. The two women, curious about the health of the little creatures, had them examined by Dr. Solveig Pflueger,
chief of the genetics committee for The International Cat Association (TICA). She offered the opinion that the munchkins were physically sound. Interestingly, this sort of mutation seems to arise regularly. During the twentieth century, similar short-legged cats were reported everywhere from Russia to Germany to Great Britain.

Not everyone saw it that way, however. For years munchkin breeders were given the cold shoulder by cat shows and breed organizations, most of which saw them as unhealthy genetic aberrations. Words such as
freak
and
abomination
were used liberally. Munchkin owners were sometimes ejected from competitions. When TICA finally recognized Blackberry’s progeny as a new breed in 1995, one veteran cat show judge resigned in protest, describing the cats as “an affront to any breeder with ethics.”

In spite—or perhaps because—of the controversy, the munchkin has gained worldwide fame. The demand for munchkin kittens keeps rising, with some costing thousands of dollars. All because of poor Blackberry. Ever an outdoor cat, she one day simply vanished from Hochenedel’s property—unaware or unconcerned that she was the founder of a dynasty.

F. D. C. WILLARD

THE CAT WHO TAUGHT US PHYSICS

Few humans can match the academic achievements ascribed to a certain Siamese named Felis Domesticus Chester (F. D. C.) Willard. He proved his mental mettle by coauthoring—with his human companion, Michigan State University professor J. H. Hetherington—two research papers on low-energy physics.

Willard earned his unique place in scientific history thanks to a typing issue. When Hetherington asked an associate to proof an article before submission, he was told that because he was the sole author, the piece couldn’t be published until the editorial
we
—used throughout—was changed to
I
. Nowadays this could be accomplished using the “find and replace all” function on one’s computer. But this was 1975, and Hetherington would have to spend days retyping.

Instead, he found a collaborator. He gave F. D. C. Willard second billing on the title page of his article, which was duly published in
Physical Review Letters
. The piece was so warmly received that in 1980 Hetherington presented a second scholarly work under his cat’s name alone. The subterfuge was finally exposed when a visitor to Hetherington’s office, upon learning the professor was out, asked to see Willard instead.

SIR ISAAC
NEWTON’S CAT

THE INSPIRATION FOR THE CAT DOOR