Sam Stall - 100 Cats Who Changed Civilization

The Amethyst voyaged into a hornet’s nest. Gun batteries on the banks of the Yangtze opened up on the ship, killing more than two dozen crewmen and inflicting heavy damage. While trying to evade the attacks, the ship ran aground on a sand bar. The captain’s cabin took a direct hit, killing him and, everyone assumed, Simon as well. After a long struggle the crew finally refloated the ship and maneuvered out of range of shore fire. The wounded were evacuated and the dead buried.

About that time the crew realized that Simon had survived the destruction of the captain’s cabin. But just barely. His whiskers were singed, he was covered with blood, and he was dehydrated and suffering from four shrapnel wounds. He was taken to sickbay and patched up, though his chances of survival seemed small.

But the indestructible cat had other ideas. Slowly he convalesced, eventually regaining enough strength to go rat hunting again. There was plenty of time for this, because the Amethyst was trapped behind enemy lines. Food was running short, and the ship’s rodent population made desperate attempts to get at it. Simon, though hurt, was the first line of defense.

When not on rat patrol, the little cat was in sickbay, commiserating with convalescing sailors. His own injuries helped them relate to the cat and perhaps feel more at ease. He even managed to befriend the Amethyst ’s new captain, who had made no secret of his dislike for felines. When he came down with a fever that confined him to his quarters, Simon dutifully sat on his bunk beside him.

Finally, after two months bottled up on the Yangtze, the Amethyst escaped under cover of darkness. The crew members were hailed as heroes, as was Simon. He was awarded the Dicken Medal for animal gallantry—the four-legged version of the Victoria Cross. So far he is the only cat ever to receive the honor.

Unfortunately, he never lived to see it. While sweating out a six-month mandatory quarantine after reaching England, he contracted an infection and died on November 28, 1949. Today, a stone marker stands over his grave. It says in part, and with typical British understatement, that the little cat’s behavior “was of the highest order.”

The first days of World War II were dark ones indeed for Great Britain. Nazi Germany had conquered almost all of Europe, leaving the residents of the island nation to fight on alone. From September 1940 to May 1941, Hitler tried to crush England’s will to resist by launching the Blitz—the indiscriminate terror bombing of cities, especially London.

Though thousands were killed and wounded, the nightly attacks failed to break the spirit of the people. Many, in the face of great danger, displayed unforgettable courage. And the heroism wasn’t just confined to humans. One of the most famous stories concerns a church cat named Faith. In 1936, the little tabby found her way to St Augustine’s and St Faith’s Church in London. She took up residence in the rectory.

Faith attended all services in which the rector, Father Henry Ross (who had originally taken her in), took part. If her benefactor wasn’t speaking, she sat in the front pew. If Ross was preaching, she sat in the pulpit at his feet.

In August 1940, Faith gave birth to a single male kitten, which the church choir celebrated the next Sunday by singing All Things Bright and Beautiful . The black and white puff ball was named Panda.

But on September 6 of that year, something strange happened. Faith, for no discernable reason, led Ross to the church basement and begged him to open the door. He complied, and later saw the mother cat carry Panda from his comfortable upstairs basket down to the dusty, dark sanctum. Three times Ross took the kitten back upstairs, and three times Faith carried him back down. Finally the pastor admitted defeat, took the kitten’s basket to the basement, and tried to make the two as comfortable as possible.

Within days, however, Faith’s odd behavior would seem more like clairvoyance.

On September 9, while Ross was away, his church took a direct hit from a bomb. He arrived to find emergency crews scrambling around the still-burning structure. Ross told them that to his knowledge the only creatures inside were Faith and Panda. The fireman he spoke to said there was no chance they could have survived.

But Ross couldn’t accept that. Risking his life, he entered the building’s sagging, flaming remains and called out for Faith. He heard a faint answering meow and dug through the rubble until he found the two felines buried under a pile of singed sheet music. Faith, grimy but uninjured, was sitting with her kitten beneath her, in the same place she’d scouted out days earlier. Ross quickly carried both cats to safety, getting clear just as the roof collapsed.

The story of the church cat’s selfless devotion to her kitten soon spread across the United Kingdom. On October 12, 1945, before a packed house at the rebuilt St Augustine’s and while nestled in the arms of the Archbishop of Canterbury, she received a special medal for her courage.

Panda, once grown, became the mascot of a retirement home. And Faith remained at the church until her death on September 28, 1948. Her passing was worldwide news, as was her burial near the churchyard gate. The feline described as “the bravest cat in the world” can spend eternity at the place she loved.

Few adventure stories are as gripping as that of the Imperial Trans-Arctic Expedition of 1914–1916, led by famed explorer Ernest Shackleton. The expedition’s original plan was to take the ship Endurance to the coast of Antarctica, then dispatch a team to sled from one end of the continent to the other. But a series of disasters turned the voyage of discovery into a battle for survival. In the end, it would claim the life of a much-loved crewmember—the Endurance ’s cat, Mrs. Chippy.

The feline came aboard with the ship’s carpenter, Henry McNeish. The crew called the cat Mrs. Chippy (chippy being slang for carpenter) , and kept the Mrs . even after they realized the cat was a male. But whatever his sex, the feline earned his keep by killing the mice and rats that threatened the expedition’s food stores.

When he wasn’t hunting vermin or chumming around with the crew, Mrs. Chippy seemed intent on finding new ways to risk his life. The ship’s deck was lined with sled dog kennels, which the cat loved to walk nonchalantly across. And one night, as the ship traversed the icy South Atlantic, the feline jumped out a porthole and into the inky sea. By some miracle he was spotted, and the ship turned in time to pick him up. He spent roughly ten minutes bobbing in the water—more than enough to kill an average human.

But his luck didn’t hold. In January 1915, the Endurance got stuck in the ice far from the Antarctic coast. Months passed, but the grip of the elements never slackened. Finally, stores began to run low, and the weight of the floes started crushing the ship’s hull, forcing the crew to live in tents out on the ice sheet. Shackleton decided to risk everything by abandoning ship and taking the entire crew, along with whatever gear and provisions they could carry or drag, 350 miles by open boat and sled to the nearest land. Everyone would go. Everyone except Mrs. Chippy. Shackleton decided that on such a desperate mission there was no place for a cat.