6 amazing cats from Scotland and around the world

Hamish McHamish prowls the streets of St Andrews

It’s national cat day. We bring you the stories of six amazing cats throughout history.

Towser the mouser

Towser the Mouse of Glenturret Distillery in Crieff, Scotland, holds the Guinness World Record for mousing, after she caught 28,899 mice in her 24 years.

Towser prowled the distillery between 1963 and 1987 and is immortalised at the distillery with a statue celebrating her achievement.

Undated picture of Towser, the record-breaking mouser who worked at the Glenturret Distillery in Crieff, Perthshire.

Hamish McHamish

Hamish McHamish originally belonged to St Andrews resident Marianne Baird, but walked out at the age of one and went on to become the town’s collective pet, wandering between houses, shops and university buildings.

Residents of St Andrews even banded together to raise £5,000 to erect a bronze statue of the much-admired feline.

He was brought to national attention with the publication of a book called Hamish McHamish, Cool Cat About Town by Susan McMullan, and had his own Facebook and Twitter accounts before sadly dying in September 2014.

Hamish McHamish originally belonged to a St Andrews student

Hodge

Hodge was Dr. Samuel Johnson’s favourite cat, famously recorded in Scottish writer James Boswell’s Life of Johnson.

Not much is known about Hodge apart from Johnson’s fondness for his cat, which separated him from the views held by others of the eighteenth century.

Today Hodge is remembered by a bronze statue in London.

Cats Protection Chief Executive Helen Ralston with a bronze casting of Towser.

Scarlett, New York

Mother cat Scarlett gained world-wide fame in 1996 after she pulled her five kittens to safety from a blazing abandoned building in Brooklyn, New York, badly scorching herself. She managed to save four but one sadly died of smoke inhalation.

Firefighter David Giannelli, told reporters at the time: “What she did was she ran in and out of that building five times, got them all out, and then started moving them one by one across the street.”

Mr Giannelli found the feline family outside the building and took them to an animal shelter, where the mother and babies received treatment and eventually found a new home.

An artists impression of Nansen the explorer

Nansen of the Belgica.

Exploration can be a lonely business, so crews aboard the Belgica, for the Belgian Antarctic Expedition of 1897–99 would have been happy to have Nansen on board.

But after the Belgica was trapped by an ice-pack for more than a year the cat disappeared - never to be seen again.

Catmando

Catmando, who died in 2002, served as joint leader of Britain’s Official Monster Raving Loony Party (OMRLP) from 1999 to 2002, along with his owner, Howling Laud Hope.

He is the only cat ever to have led a political party.

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