100 Cats Who Changed Civilization (8 page)

Thus ended the first attempt to gain free speech rights for cats. Not with a whimper, or even a meow, but with a quip.

CAT MANDU

THE FELINE WHO WAS
A TRUE PARTY ANIMAL

Few jobs offer as many chances for personal embarrassment and career-destroying scandals as that of political party boss. That’s what makes the spotless career of one Cat Mandu of Great Britain so exemplary. For several years he helped lead a high-profile—albeit not very powerful—political organization. If there was trouble, he always landed on his feet. And if there was controversy, he knew how to keep his mouth shut.

Actually, he had little choice on that count. Because he couldn’t talk. Because he was a cat. Specifically, a large ginger tomcat owned by Alan Hope, who was also known as Howling Laud Hope.

What sort of organization would grant leadership to a feline? None other than the Official Monster Raving Loony Party. As one can surmise from the name, the group isn’t entirely serious. Founded in 1983 by musician David Sutch (a.k.a. Screaming Lord Sutch), it has offered candidates for numberless elections, from seats in Parliament to the lowliest local posts. Their platform has, at various times, included a call to abolish the income tax; to retrain police officers “too stupid” to do their jobs as vicars in the Church of England; and to require passports for pets.
Ironically, this last idea was taken up by the actual political parties and adopted.

There’s little chance of them following the Loony’s decision to put an animal in charge, however. In 1999, after Screaming Lord Sutch’s suicide, the faithful gathered at the Golden Lion Hotel in Ashburton, Devon, to select a new leader. According to Loony lore, the vote produced a tie between acting chairman Howling Laud Hope and his pet. By general acclamation, he and Cat Mandu became joint leaders.

The feline performed his duties with distinction. He even produced the party’s 2001 political manifesto—a blank page. Sadly, his career was cut short when, in July 2002, he was run over by a car while crossing the street. Not that the feline flavor of the Official Monster Raving Loony Party has been totally expunged. In 1978, the organization had adopted the leopard as its official Party Animal, which it remains to this day.

SOCKS

THE UNOFFICIAL MASCOT OF
THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION

While plenty of U.S. presidents have brought along dogs during their White House tenures, only a handful deigned to keep cats. Bill Clinton joined that short list in 1993 when the family feline, Socks, accompanied the first family to Washington, D.C. It was the culmination of an incredible rags-to-riches story for the black and white mixed breed. Born in 1991, he spent his kittenhood living under the porch of Chelsea Clinton’s music teacher’s home in Little Rock, Arkansas. The teacher wasn’t able to get close to either Socks or his sibling, a kitten named Midnight. But when Chelsea saw the duo and approached them, Socks jumped into her arms.

Thus a media phenomenon was born. Midnight also found a good home, but Socks won worldwide fame. First he lived in the governor’s mansion. Then, after Clinton’s election to the presidency, the Arkansas tomcat moved to the White House. Instead of crouching under a porch, he spent his days lazing in the garden outside the Oval Office or napping in a favorite chair in the West Wing. He also made numerous public appearances, often traveling in a cat carrier fitted with the presidential seal.

Not that life in a media fishbowl was always perfect. Photographers swarmed Socks, sometimes bribing him with catnip. After it was deemed too dangerous to give him free run of the White House grounds, he was confined to a very long leash. But those inconveniences paled in comparison to his longstanding quarrel with the “first dog,” a purebred Labrador retriever named Buddy. According to Hillary Clinton, Socks hated the exuberant canine “instantly and forever.” The two did, however, bury the hatchet long enough to pose for the cover of a book called
Dear Socks, Dear Buddy: Kids’ Letters to the First Pets
.

After the end of the Clinton administration, Socks received not only a change of address, but a change of family. Given his well-known dislike for Buddy, Socks was turned over to the care of Betty Curie, Bill Clinton’s former personal secretary. The cat and Curie had always been great friends, and the Clintons felt that they should enjoy their retirements together. Today she and Socks live in Maryland in a Labrador-free house, far from the limelight.

COLBY

THE CAT WHO WENT
TO COLLEGE, SORT OF

Most people think there’s no substitute for a quality education. But in fact there is, as a six-year-old cat named Colby Nolan taught the world. In 2004, Pennsylvania Attorney General Jerry Pappert became aware of a Texas-based diploma mill that sold online college degrees via unsolicited e-mails. To foil the people behind it, his department set up a unique sting operation.

Undercover operatives made online contact with an “institution of higher learning” called Trinity Southern University in Plano, Texas. Actually, TSU didn’t exist. But then, neither did Colby Nolan, the eager scholar whom the sting operators claimed to be. According to their e-mails, young Colby was interested in obtaining a bachelor’s degree in business administration for the low, low price of $299.

When the TSU representatives sent him a “student application” to fill out, it was returned containing information that shouldn’t have qualified him for a GED, let alone university admission. Colby’s trumped-up resume stated that he’d taken three community college courses, worked at a fast-food restaurant, and had a paper route. Yet surprisingly (or, perhaps, not so surprisingly), the
school’s administrators stated that his work experience qualified him not for a bachelor’s degree, but for an executive MBA (available for only $399, plus shipping).

The TSU people couldn’t know it, but Colby was even more unqualified than his resume made him sound. He was, in fact, a six-year-old black cat belonging to an attorney general’s office staffer. Yet once the check for his diploma cleared, he received an authentic-looking sheepskin, complete with signatures from the university’s president and dean. Another $99 netted Colby’s transcript. It stated that the feline, who could neither speak, read, nor write, and had never set one paw in a classroom, had accumulated a 3.5 GPA.

This was more than enough for the cops. Colby the student was revealed to be Colby the cat, and he even posed for news photographers while wearing a tiny, feline-sized graduation cap. Shortly thereafter charges were filed against the quasi-mythical TSU, along with the individuals who ran it. Not surprisingly, the school’s Web site almost immediately vanished from the Internet. All thanks to the school’s most notorious graduate.

LEWIS

THE CAT WHO WAS SLAPPED
WITH A RESTRAINING ORDER

Some felines become famous, but some become infamous. Such is the case for a longhaired black and white Connecticut tomcat named Lewis. The tiny miscreant’s violent temper got him in trouble with the law, earning him what amounts to a life sentence. The formerly outdoor cat has been condemned by city officials in the town of Fairfield to spend the rest of his days indoors—or else. City hall accomplished this by serving him with what was arguably the first restraining order ever issued for a cat; it is certainly the most controversial, widely publicized one.

Lewis’s brush with the law began when he launched unprovoked assaults on the people living on a quiet cul-de-sac named Sunset Circle. He appeared out of nowhere, attacking his victims from behind. “He looks like Felix the Cat and has six toes on each foot, each with a long claw,” one harassed resident told the
Connecticut Post
. “They are formidable weapons.” Lewis apparently wasn’t shy about deploying them against anyone who crossed his path, including a hapless Avon lady who was reportedly savaged as she got out of her car.

Finally a neighbor, Janet Kettman, who claimed to have been attacked twice, called the Fairfield
Police Department’s animal control officer, Rachel Solveira. The officer slapped a restraining order on the offending beast, which had been dubbed the “Terrorist of Sunset Circle.” Lewis was allowed limited outdoor privileges if he took Prozac twice a day. But after a couple of months he was back in hot water when his owner, Ruth Cisero, stopped giving the cat his medication. And then, for good measure, she let him escape from the house. Not surprisingly, his first order of business was to seek out and savage another neighbor, Maureen Bachtig.

In no time, Cisero found herself sharing her pet’s punishment. She was arrested for failing to comply with a restraining order and second-degree reckless endangerment, and she was placed on probation. To add insult to injury, one of Lewis’s previous victims filed a $5,000 lawsuit against her.

Just when things couldn’t get any stranger, they did. The local newspapers broke the story, which quickly exploded into an international media sensation. Smelling a colorful human interest piece, press from around the world fell upon the juicy item like, well, Lewis going after an Avon lady. Overnight, Cisero, her embattled neighbors, and anyone else with the vaguest connection to the cat started fielding calls from everyone from CNN to
Inside Edition
to
The Daily Show
to the BBC. Lewis got his own page on
myspace.com
, and Save Lewis T-shirts hit the market shortly thereafter.

Cisero dutifully talked to the legions of reporters in hopes that all the interest might somehow help both her case and her cat. As for Lewis, he lounged indoors with his owner’s other feline, Thomas, and occasionally posed menacingly for cringing photographers. When he wasn’t doing “interviews,” he stared forlornly out the window at the birds and squirrels he’d formerly hunted. He was, at least, mercifully oblivious to the high-stakes legal wrangling over his future. In April 2006, at a court appearance crowded with media, Cisero asked for an end to her probation. The judge said she would only consider it if Lewis were euthanized. Finally, in June 2006, Cisero was
granted “accelerated probation,” but with one stipulation. The judge in the case stated that Lewis could never go outside again. “There are no exceptions,” she warned sternly. “None.”