Street cats who came in from the cold

IN NEW YORK in the early summer of 1893, the bodies of dead cats began turning up all over Brooklyn. The area already had a reputation for being overrun with ‘noisy tramp cats’, but the abundance of cadavers was new.

In June, Grace Georgia Devide was arrested for killing stray cats. She was a member of a new society called The Midnight Band of Mercy. These women couldn’t bear to witness the suffering of the animals once cherished as kittens, then abandoned as they grew and bred. Before neutering became widely available, what else was to be done about the city’s ever-increasing population of starving and disease-ridden stray cats?

Twenty-first century cat lovers should brace themselves for the fact that the first half of Clare Campbell’s thorough history of rescue cats necessarily deals with the euthanasia of hundreds of thousands of street cats, once classed as ‘vermin’. Those who wanted to prevent strays falling into the hands of furriers and vivisectionists were originally advised to drown them.

Then, as it was not easy to force prussic acid down their throats (as was done to unwanted dogs), cheap and widely available chloroform became the lethal drug of choice.

By 1884, Battersea Dogs Home opened the first large-scale chamber for the ‘negation of life’. Concern about the humane disposal of feral cats ran alongside the rising popularity of cats as pets. Although unfashionable at the start of the 19th century, the feline star rose throughout Queen Victoria’s reign. Her Majesty’s public affection for her pedigree angora White Heather completed the cat’s triumphant social climb. One of Victoria’s favourite prime ministers, Lord Salisbury, reportedly held long conversations ‘in murmurs and soft purrs’ with his cat Floss.

The war did much to shift attitudes. As cats provided comfort to the lonely and bereaved and protected precious food from rodents, the concept of ‘rehoming’ gained popularity.

In the Fifties, cats overtook dogs as the most popular household pet, with the neutering movement gaining momentum. In the Sixties, the cause became cool, championed by pop stars and models such as Celia Hammond, who trapped strays for neutering herself and went on to found her own shelter. This form of population control was more appealing to animal lovers than the electrocution now offered (alongside chloroform) by Battersea.

A tradition of rescue cats at 10 Downing Street began in 1973, when the RSPCA provided a stray kitten called Wilberforce who prowled on through the Callaghan and Thatcher years. In 1992, Humphrey wandered in from the streets of SW1 to serve under Thatcher, Major and Blair, while the Camerons adopted Larry in 2011.

Shelters with ‘No Kill’ policies have become increasingly popular in the new millennium, but the recession has also seen more strays handed in to homes. In 2010, the Blue Cross scooped up 1,175 kittens dumped at roadsides.

Anybody in search of a rescue cat today should take a fresh look at the much-maligned black cat, which is most likely to be overlooked by potential adopters on the absurdly superficial grounds that it has ‘no personality’.

Tell that to my own lovably barmy, black rescue cat, who is chasing the computer mouse as I type this review.