THE SAVOY’S LUCKY CAT
If you have a dinner for 13 people at the Savoy in London, be assured that Kaspar the cat will be joining you at the table. Kaspar has joined every party of 13 diners since 1927. After South African mining magnate Woolf Joel was shot dead in Johannesburg in 1898, just weeks after hosting a dinner for 13 at the hotel, the Savoy took to sending a staff member to join every party of 13 — until Kaspar, carved from a block of wood by British sculptor Basil Ionides, arrived in 1927.
When one of his party cancelled at the last moment, Joel had apparently scoffed at another guest’s premonition that the first person to leave the table that night would soon die, and rolled the dice. He was killed by Baron von Veltheim for refusing to take part in a plot to kidnap President Paul Kruger.
Kaspar now has a restaurant named after him at the Savoy, along with a new sculpture created by South African artist Jonty Hurwitz. kaspars.co.uk.